Hiragana

Hiragana is the first system you want to learn, as they are phonetic symbols or "pronunciation guides" for kanji, and have an extensive role in Japanese grammar. Hiragana is the first alphabet that children learn, and, at any age, is the "default" alphabet used when a particular kanjiis unknown or forgotten.

Here are the basic 46 hiragana with their readings:

The nice thing about Japanese is that once you can read and say these, you can read and say longer words, which are simply combinations of the individual letters. Let's try some:

Easy, right? Now let's move on to the modified hiragana.

There are 4 groups of hiragana that are modified by two small quote-like marks added just above and/or to the right of the letter. They are the ka, sa, ta, and ha groups. The ha group alone has an additional mode of modification which is made by adding a small degree-like circle. Here are the modified hiragana with their readings:

It will be noticed that two ji 's and two zu 's are created, but the ones in the sa group are used most of the time. Accurate knowledge concerning differentiation and use of these is not important until the student is well into the study of kanji.

Let's try these:

Next up are the combined hiragana, which are made by adding a small ya, yu, or yo to letters in the second line, namely ki through ri, including the modified ones mentioned above. For example, ki + ya = kya; chi + yu = chu; and so on. Here they all are:

The ri group is usually the hardest for foreign speakers to master, but that's because they're still trying to pronounce the r like the English r. If you just pronounce them dya, dyu, dyo, with just a light d, they'll sound fine.

Try these:

The last thing that needs to be mentioned about hiragana at this time is the small tsu, which indicates double consonants. As one becomes familiar with kanji, this will become easier to understand. Here are some good examples. Remember to hold the double as mentioned in consonants.

This should be enough about hiragana for the time being. All the examples used here are words that are usually written in kanji, but are shown in hiragana to show what they look like and how they work together.