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There are 46 characters in hiragana as shown in the chart below. This chart is to be read top-to-bottom, right-to-left starting from あ followed by い, う, え, お, か, き, く, け, こ, etc. and ends with the last symbol ん. This represents the "alphabetical" order of Japanese. Each hiragana character represents a syllable in Japanese. There are only five (5) vowels in Japanese (/a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, and /o/), and these are located on the first (right-most) column of the hiragana chart. To pronounce each character, combine the consonant at the top of each column with the vowel on each row. For example, column /k/ and row /a/ yield the hiragana character for /ka/ or か. (This is also how you transcribe Japanese by using romaji. On the computer keyboard, type "ka" to get か, type "ki" to get き, and so on. We will postpone the keyboard typing in Japanese until the end of this lesson.) For now, you should focus on associating each hiragana character directly with its pronunciation. |
Do not attempt to rewrite each hiragana character in romaji
just to help you read. This will create romaji-dependency, and
it will only delay your acquisition of hiragana. 
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Click on each character below to see how each one is pronounced. Picture-based mnemonic help is provided for each character. Try to associate the sounds and the picture with the shape of hiragana. (For now, ignore the grayed-out characters below. They will be discussed later.) |
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If you would like to see the entire mnemonic help in one file, click here. |
The last character ん in the chart is considered
a syllable by itself and is NEVER used to begin a Japanese word.
To write the sounds /na/, /ni/, /nu/, /ne/ and /no/, the characters な, に, ぬ, ね,
and の must be used respectively rather than combining two characters
like んあ (This is considered as two syllables).
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