HIRAGANA LESSON ONE
Welcome to the first lesson of Hiragana! In this lesson you will learn the Hiragana form of the sounds A, I, U, E, O. To
see the stroke order, all you need to do is hover your mouse over the graphic of the character shown on the page. To hear
how to pronounce the characters, click your mouse on any picture of a character group.
Given for each character is a little mnemonic to help you to remember how the character looks. This is the little
phrase to the right of each character.
Some comments: Hiragana is called a syllabary is because each character represents one syllable. In
english, several vowels or consonants may combine to form one syllable, but in Japanese, each character is one syllable. However
the difference in sound is hard to discern in most cases. For example, hai (yes) is HA - I, but sounds like "hi" in english. With
practice you will learn the way Japanese sounds, but it is by far best to learn speech from someone who is fluent in the language!
| A |
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picture "the antenna is broken" |
| I |
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picture the i's in hawaii |
| U |
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an old lady getting hit by a stone says oomph |
| E |
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"H" with an exra dot and a line |
| O |
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picture a golf course hole with ball coming in |
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Back to Intro |
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