J-Shy's brief explaination on reading Japanese Characters

Tables of Japanese Characters

There are four basic character sets used in writing modern Japanese: katakana, hiragana, kanji, and romaji. You will learn about hiragana and katana in this page. Kanji (º~¦r) is chinese words borrowed from China. Romaji is simply english (roman alphabets).

Notes on how to pronunce A I U E O

A - sounds like a in the word Father.
I - sounds like i in the word in.
U - sounds like u in the word Sue.
E - sounds like 'eah' in the word yeah.
O - sounds like All.
r in japanese sounds like l, so ra sounds a bit like la.
ri sounds a bit like li

Hiragana
hiragana1
hiragana2
hiragana3

There are 46 basic hiragana characters. It's most often used for writing short words like particles or different endings on words. If you're lucky some of the kanji you see will have hiragana written over or next to them in smaller letters (called "furigana"). You should often see it in Karaoke. This tells you how to pronounce an otherwise unfamiliar kanji

notes: two dotes or little circle on top right side of the words change their pronunciation.
Two dotes on K change the sound to G,
two dotes on S change the sound to Z,
two dotes on T change the sound to D,
two dotes on H change the sound to B,
little circle on H change the sound to P.

Continue to Katakana Chart

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This page was created on 17/April/98 last updated on 14/Sep/98