Lesson 1: Hiragana — The Foundation of Japanese

Read your first Japanese words

Look at いえ, かお, and そら. By the end of this lesson, you should be able to read them as ie (house), kao (face), and sora (sky), find their characters in a chart, and write them without copying the whole word.

Hiragana is a syllabary: its symbols usually represent a vowel or a consonant–vowel unit, rather than separate consonant letters as in English. A more precise unit for Japanese rhythm is the mora, a short timing beat. The nasal ん also takes a beat. Small-character combinations need special treatment, which lesson 2 develops.

Japanese writing uses hiragana, katakana, and kanji, often together. Hiragana appears in grammatical endings, particles, and many words; katakana often writes loanwords and foreign names; kanji represents words or meaningful word parts. Those are useful tendencies, not rules that every sentence must contain all three. You can begin speaking while you learn to read.

This lesson introduces the whole basic chart. Lesson 2 returns to the later rows and builds fluent reading with voicing marks, small kana, and longer words. Work a few rows at a time; recognizing everything once is not the same as remembering it tomorrow.

1. Start with five steady vowels

The roman letters below are rōmaji, a reading aid. We use the common Hepburn-style spellings shi, chi, tsu, fu. Other romanization systems use si, ti, tu, hu for the same kana; those spellings are not proof that the speaker pronounces them incorrectly. When a question asks for the chart's rōmaji, use the spelling shown here.

English examples are approximations. Do not copy English stress or vowel length into the Japanese word. Japanese uses pitch patterns; louder capitalized syllables are not a reliable pronunciation guide.

Read あい as a–i, two beats. Read いえ as i–e, also two. Keep both vowels: いえ is not the English word “eye.” A long vowel lasts two beats and can change a word's meaning; lesson 2 shows how it is written.

For native audio and character-by-character writing models, use the Japan Foundation's Marugoto Plus hiragana chart. Listen, imitate, and compare your attempt with the model.

2. Use the chart as a map

Read across a row in a, i, u, e, o order. The row label helps you locate a character; the actual reading beside it tells you how to say it.

Nasal: ん n — its own beat, listed separately because it does not belong to one of the five vowel columns.

There are 46 basic characters here: seven complete five-character rows, plus three Y-row characters, five R-row characters, two W-row characters, and ん: 35 + 3 + 5 + 2 + 1 = 46. Empty cells are not characters you need to invent. This is the modern basic chart, not a list of every historical or extended kana spelling.

Three sound details deserve attention:

• し, ち, つ: use the chart readings shi, chi, tsu. For つ, begin with the consonant cluster at the end of English “cats,” then add the Japanese u vowel. Do not omit the t sound.
• ふ: let air pass between the lips without pressing the upper teeth against the lower lip as in a typical English f. The reading fu is an approximation of this Japanese sound.
• ら, り, る, れ, ろ: a useful starting point is one brief tongue tap near the ridge behind the upper teeth. For many American English speakers, the middle sound in “butter” is a useful comparison. It is not a long English r or a rolled r.

ん is not simply English n in every environment: its sound changes with neighboring sounds. Give it a beat in ほ・ん (hon, book) and せ・ん・せ・い (sensei, teacher). It normally does not begin ordinary vocabulary words, but informal responses such as ん? exist. “Never at the start of any written expression” would be too strong.

3. Look closely before you write

A reliable shape cue points to a feature you can actually check. Compare the characters side by side in the same font:

For わ / れ / ね, inspect the right-hand finish rather than assuming they are the same shape: わ has a rounded right side, れ an outward tail, and ね a loop. Typefaces and handwriting differ. Printed き and さ may join parts that are separated in common handwriting; り also has connected and separated printed forms. A font is not a complete stroke-order lesson.

Writing practice: watch one numbered stroke model, copy it once, cover it, and write from memory. Compare the direction, number, and finish of the strokes. Common movements often go from top to bottom or left to right, but those tendencies do not determine every hiragana stroke order. Follow the individual model. In standard handwriting, the five vowels use 3, 2, 2, 2, 3 strokes respectively; counting strokes alone does not tell you their path.

Try an optional sound cue: the word key can remind you of き, ki. Such associations are personal memory aids, not facts about a character's origin. The goal is to recognize き directly, eventually without recalling an English picture.

4. Small marks change the reading

Dakuten ゛ consists of two small strokes; handakuten ゜ is a small circle. Compare は ha → ば ba → ぱ pa. These are three different written forms and readings.

For the H-row, handakuten gives ぱ ぴ ぷ ぺ ぽ — pa pi pu pe po. In this basic chart, practice those five circle-mark forms. Extended writing has other uses, so do not infer a rule about every possible use of the mark.

Dakuten is traditionally called a voicing mark. The K→G, S→Z and T→D row labels are useful organizational guides; H→B is not simply adding vocal-cord vibration to an unchanged h sound. Learn the actual pair. In standard Japanese, ぢ and じ normally share a pronunciation, as do づ and ず, but spelling is still word-specific. Lesson 2 explains when you may see the less frequent forms.

Read か / が, then は / ば / ぱ. Point to the mark before saying the sound. Normal か is not whispered speech; it has an unvoiced k consonant followed by a vowel.

5. Decode words, then use a few whole expressions

For さくら, locate さ in the S-row, く in the K-row, and ら in the R-row. Read sa–ku–ra, three beats. Then cover the word and rebuild it from the sounds. For はな, the written word alone can mean flower or nose; a picture or sentence resolves the meaning. Kanji and pitch patterns can distinguish meanings too.

The following expressions are whole chunks to practice, not a test of grammar you have not learned. Spaces in the segmented reading are aids; ordinary Japanese writing does not usually separate every word with spaces.

In the first sentence, これ means this, わたしの my, and いえです identifies the house politely. The particle は is read wa. In the study and washing chunks, the object particle を is normally pronounced o; “wo” is a common spelling used to identify that character, not an extra w you must pronounce.

The long vowels in べんきょう and おはよう are shown by ō in the reading; kyou and ohayou show the kana spelling more directly and are also useful reading aids. A small ょ combines with the preceding character. You will practice these details systematically in lesson 2.

あいしてる is a strong declaration of love. すきです or だいすきです can express affection in an appropriate relationship, but are not interchangeable in every setting. あさ, morning, is a noun; it is not by itself a good-morning greeting. The phrase lesson will give you more context for greetings.

Your first independent reading round

Read そら → かお → いえ → あさ without following chart order. Then write a, na, su, ya in hiragana: あ、な、す、や. Finally, read が、ば、ぱ while checking their marks.

If you hesitate, revisit that pair or row and try again later. Short rounds of look → cover → recall → check are more informative than repeatedly copying a page without testing memory. Next, you will turn this chart knowledge into steadier word and sentence reading.