Lesson 1: Introduction To Hiragana

[Great_Aku_Ha]

Hiragana Lessons
Japanese writing systems

There are 46 hiragana characters for 46 different sounds. Hiragana are used for expressing "grammatical" elements such as particles, and endings of adjectives and verbs which show tenses, etc. Kanji are used for expressing "meaningful" elements such as nouns and stems of adjectives and verbs.

It is possible to write entire Japanese sentences in hiragana. If an adult forgets certain kanji which are rarely used, he/she may substitute hiragana for them. Since the basic 46 hiragana symbols and some modifications of it suffice for all Japanese sounds, Japanese children start to read and write Japanese all in hiragana before making an attempt to learn some of the two thousand kanji currently used.  

[Great_Aku_Ha]

Hiragana Chart

Japanese is written in a combination of three scripts: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Kanji represents ideas or objects, hiragana expresses the grammatical relationships between them. Katakana is used for words of foreign origin. Like romaji, both hiragana and katakana characters represent one syllable and have no meaning other than the representation of sound. Though Japanese is usually written in a combination of three scripts, Japanese sentences can be written in either hiragana or katakana only. I think learning hiragana and katakana is a good start for Japanese writing.

I will show 46 basic hiragana characters this time, and in the following lessons I will introduce how to write them.

 

[Great_Aku_Ha]

Hiragana Pronunciation

あ (a)
い (i)
う (u)
え (e)
お (o)
か (ka)
き (ki)
く (ku)
け (ke)
こ (ko)
さ (sa)
し (shi)
す (su)
せ (se)
そ (so)
た (ta)
ち (chi)
つ (tsu)
て (te)
と (to)
な (na)
に (ni)
ぬ (nu)
ね (ne)
の (no)
は (ha)
ひ (hi)
ふ (fu)
へ (he)
ほ (ho)
ま (ma)
み (mi)
む (mu)
め (me)
も (mo)
や (ya)
ゆ (yu)
よ (yo)
ら (ra)
り (ri)
る (ru)
れ (re)
ろ (ro)
わ (wa)
を (o)
ん (n)

 

[H7ppy N3k0]

wow  

[leslie knope 2020]

Ok, this looks easy
Question, is を (o)'s and お (o)'s pronunciation the same?  

[Gennten]

I think you're missing alot of things. From my friend, there are over 50 characters and from my book, there are like, 70 or something. And around 30+ charcters, thought they're of combination of the 70 hiragana characters.  

[Sad or high or both]

Oh, Intresting I happen to be questing to learn this language to write manga.  

[Rokon14]

woa time to write this down