Pronounce each hiragana character from top to bottom, starting from the rightmost column of the chart. Click on each character to hear its pronunciation. Also, try to pronounce each column all at once. (Ignore the ones in gray.)

The table above also represents the "alphabetical" order of the Japanese writing system. The dictionary entries are ordered in the sequence shown above. In a typical Japanese-language dictionary, hiragana characters at the top row of each column (あ, か, さ, た, な, は, ま, や, ら, わ and ん) is used to label the order of the words starting with vowels (あ, い, う, え, お) and then the words starting with "k/g" sound (か, が, き, ぎ, く, ぐ...), followed by the words starting with "s/z" sound (さ, ざ, し, じ, す, ず...) and so on.