Very Brief History of how Kana came aboutJapan didn't develop a native written language before it was introduced to Chinese characters in the 5th century by buddhist monks. Chinese Character are ideographs that represent one word or idea, and it wasn't quite jiving with native Japanese words, so they developed "man'yougana," which was the first "syllabary" in written Japanese. A handful of character were selected to represent a single syllable rather than a whole word. This was pretty tedious, writting entire kanji characters to represent just one sound, so the simplified hiragana and katakana came about by the end of 7th century.
Hiragana is a cursive script, whereas katakana is more angular. Hiragana is almost a shorthand version of man'yougana characters, using 2 or 3 stokes to simplify the kanji characters. You can look at
this image to see the progression.
UsageHiragana the base script of Japanese, it is the first script children learn. One *could* write Japanese exclusively in hiragana, though it would be very difficult to read. Hiragana is used for particles, furigana (over kanji), okurigana (the kana after verb) or words that don't have a kanji counterpart. Even common expressions that do have kanji (like kawaii, 可愛い) will often use hiragana.
PronounciationThere are 46 "syllabaries." and are usually arranged in the following order
a i u e o
ka ki ku ke ko
sa shi su se so
ta chi tsu te to
na ni nu ne no
ha hi fu he ho
ma mi mu me mo
ya yu yo
ra ri ru re ro
wa (o)
n
some things to note
1. japanese has 5 vowel sounds that pretty much stay the same
"a" as in "saw"
"i" is like an english "ee" sound, as in "keep"
"u" is like an english "oo" sound, as in "moo" (but said with rounder lips)
"e" is like a long english "a", as in "kay"
"o" as in "no" or "so"
2. the Japanese "r" is not an english "r" sound, but somwhere between an "l" and a "r" sound, sometimes it even sounds like a "d"
3. There are a few breaks in the pattern: shi instead of si, chi instead of ti, tsu instead of tu, and fu instead of hu. Fu doesn't have a strong english "f" sound, it's like forcing an "h" sound through tighly pursed lips (as if you were about to whistle)
4. There are two "o"s, one is only used as a particle and is placed with wa because it was once commonly pronounced "wo" (and still is by some)
5. "n" is a nasal sound (that sounds like a m when it preceeds b's and p's) and it never starts a word. (except some sound words)
Tips on learning Hiragana idea Either pretend there is a square or literally draw a square. When writing any Japanese character, kana or kanji alike, you generally start in the top left corner of that square and you will end in the lower right corner. There are exceptions, of course.
Also, generally, you will write horizonal stroke first, then vertical strokes.
You never draw a stroke horizontally from right to left, nor do you ever write a vertical stroke from down to up. There are however stroke where you sweep down to the left, or up to the right.
exclaim pay attention to stroke order, it's not only important but usually logical
idea Practice makes perfect: copy a character down over and over. Eventually it will become second nature and you won't have to think about it.
idea Come up with mnemonic devices, the more the better. Things like ""me" is the word for "eye" and me kind of looks like an eye" will help you out.
ganbatte kudasai (you can do it, go for it!)
