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Introduction

You probably picked up this book because you are interested in the best way to learn hiragana and katakana. If so, you came to the right place. The methods in this book have helped thousands of students in the United States and Japan to successfully learn both, and they can help you too.

This book makes learning hiragana and katakana fast and effective by using clear explanations and examples and lots of fun exercises. It also features memorable picture mnemonics like the one below. Picture mnemonics enhance memory by associating the shape and sound of each character with pictures and English words already familiar to you. For example, the hiragana character “mo” as in “more” looks like a fishhook intersected by two lines, leading to the idea that “you can catch more fish with more bait.”

Katakana and hiragana characters—together called kana—are the two sets of 46 phonetic characters used in Japanese. An average, diligent student can learn to read the basic 46 hiragana and 46 katakana characters in a few hours, and with persistence can learn to write them in a few days. If you study for thirty minutes a day, in a few short weeks you will be a confident reader and writer of hiragana and katakana.

How to Use This Book

This introduction gives you basic information about the characters: where they came from, how to pronounce and write them, and even how to write your name.

Both hiragana and katakana are essential to basic Japanese proficiency, but normally hiragana is learned first. In Section One you will learn the basic 46 hiragana characters, and how to write some simple words. Section Two introduces the usage rules that will allow you to write all of the sounds of Japanese and gives you more opportunities for practice. Section Three strengthens your hiragana skills through a wide range of exercises designed to both increase your knowledge of the Japanese language and reinforce your newly acquired writing skills. Then in Sections Four, Five and Six you will follow the very same process to master the katakana characters.

At the end of the book you will find a list of suggested flash card activities. Since it is easier to learn to recognize hiragana and katakana than to write them, you may want to begin with the flash cards, printing them from the and reviewing them often. As you learn to recognize the characters, you will find it much easier to write them. Whether you begin with the writing sections or the flash cards, you will get the most out of this book by doing all the activities.

An Overview of the Japanese Writing System

Japanese uses four types of scripts: hiragana, katakana, kanji and romaji.

• Hiragana is a cursive set of 46 phonetic characters that express all of the sounds of Japanese. Hiragana is used mainly for writing the grammatical parts of sentences and native Japanese words for which there are no kanji.

• Katakana is an angular set of 46 phonetic characters, generally used for writing foreign words and for showing emphasis.

• Kanji are characters of ancient Chinese origin that represent ideas and sounds, and they are used for most nouns, verbs and other “content” words. There are 2,131 “common use” kanji that school children must learn by ninth grade.

• Romaji are roman (Latin) letters used to write Japanese; you must already know romaji since you are reading this. Romaji is used in textbooks and dictionaries for foreigners learning Japanese (and for Japanese people learning western languages) but its use in day-to-day writing is somewhat limited to things like company names and acronyms.

Don’t be too intimidated by the number and seeming complexity of Japanese characters. Japan’s 99 percent literacy rate should allay any fears that learning Japanese is impossible. Compared to kanji, kana characters are not complex; each one only has between one and four strokes. Each set of kana has 46 characters, compared to the English alphabet which has 52 letters (26 upper case and 26 lower case). Although kana characters have a few more overall strokes than the letters of the alphabet, kana have a consistent one-to-one relationship between character and sound. By contrast more than half of the English alphabet letters have multiple pronunciations, and seemingly endless exceptions. Anyone who has learned the complexities of English spelling can succeed at learning kana. So, although learning hiragana and katakana may at first seem to be a Sumo-sized task, with the right training and practice you can do it! Before you know it you’ll be a kana champion!

Don’t rely on romaji. Foreigners learning Japanese sometimes rely on romaji, never learning to read and write. While it is possible to become quite proficient in speaking Japanese using only romaji, you will not be truly literate. Get comfortable using hiragana. When you buy a dictionary make sure it is written in hiragana, not romaji. When you write in Japanese use hiragana and katakana and kanji characters as you learn them.

How to Pronounce Hiragana and Katakana

Hiragana and katakana are pronounced the same way. The first five characters are the five Japanese vowels. Japanese vowels are short and clipped compared to English vowels. (All of the examples in this book use Standard American English pronunciation).

a	as in father
i	as in easy
u	as in you
e	as in red
o	as in oak

The rest of the characters are consonant-vowel combinations, with the consonant always coming first (e.g., “ka,” “ki,” “ku,” “ke” and “ko”). The one exception is the single consonant syllable “n” that is pronounced by touching the back of the tongue to the roof of the mouth, as in “ink” and “sing.” Many Japanese consonants are commonly found in English and are easy to pronounce.

k	as in coat	g	as in goat (voiced version of k)
s	as in Sue	z	as in zoo (voiced version of g)
t	as in tie	d	as in dye (voiced version of t)
n	as in no
h	as in house
P	as in pig	b	as in big (voiced version of p)
m	as in man

Several Japanese consonants, however, are not commonly found in English and require special attention. One is the Japanese “r.” In English “r” is pronounced by curling the tongue so the sides touch the upper teeth (not touching the tip of the tongue). In Japanese, “r” is pronounced by tapping the tongue against the ridge behind the upper teeth, as in “paddle” and “ladder,” sounding like a combination of “l” and “d”; it is not a rolling trill as in Spanish. “tsu” is pronounced as in “tsunami” and “cat’s whiskers.” “fu” is pronounced without touching the upper teeth and lower lip. It almost sounds like “who” and “hooting owl,” except the lips are more pursed and air escapes more quickly.

The special consonant “y” as in “yarn” is paired with the vowels “a,” “u” and “o” to make the syllables “ya,” “yu” and “yo.” This consonant is special because Japanese uses it extensively in combination with all of the other consonants to form additional syllables, such as “kya,” “kyu” and “kyo.” In order to accommodate more foreign syllables, many more character combinations are used in katakana (see Section Five).

Although katakana tries to represent gairaigo (“loan words”) as faithfully as possible, the words sound distinctly Japanese. In 1991 the Japanese government updated the official guidelines for writing gairaigo. The guidelines included 33 more combined characters for writing foreign words. These 33 combined characters are not the limit—the guidelines clearly state that other combinations can be made as needed. Still, all syllables must conform to the basics of Japanese phonology (see Section Two).

How to Write Hiragana

Hiragana is the first writing system that Japanese children learn. It is not uncommon for a four-year-old to be able to fluently read children’s books and the like because of hiragana’s simple one-to-one correspondence between characters and sounds. Hiragana can easily be used to write any word or phrase, and even adults will sometimes substitute hiragana for difficult or uncommon kanji characters.

According to the U.S. Foreign Service Institute, it takes approximately 1,300 hours to acquire advanced Japanese proficiency, but much less time is required for basic proficiency. Hiragana is a great place to begin. The immediate benefits of learning hiragana include improving your pronunciation and gaining access to hundreds of dictionaries, textbooks, and other learning and enrichment materials written with hiragana. Plus, all of the writing skills of hiragana are transferable to learning katakana and kanji, making them easier to learn.

There are various styles used to write hiragana, but this book only uses the most standard kyōkashotai or “schoolbook” style. Hiragana characters are composed of three types of strokes: “stops,” “jumps” and “brushes.” With a stop, the pencil must come to a stop before it is removed from the paper. Jumps are written by removing the pencil from the paper as it moves to the next stroke. With a brush, the pencil is slowly removed from the paper as the stroke is written, giving it a tapered, sweeping appearance. In the example below, the character “ke” as in “Kevin” is written with all three types of strokes. The first stroke is a jump, the second is a stop, and the third is a brush.

Writing the correct stroke types in the correct order is important for forming balanced, legible characters. With practice you will get the hang of it. You can make your characters look more authentic by slightly tilting left-to-right strokes, as in stroke two in “ke” (see above), rather than writing them straight across. Character strokes are generally written from left to right and top to bottom. Try to center each character in an imaginary box, not too far to the left, right, top or bottom.

Traditionally Japanese was written from top to bottom, progressing in columns from right to left across the page. Now it is also commonly written from left to write, as with English. All the hiragana in this book is written from left to right.

How to Write Katakana

Katakana characters also are composed of the same three types of strokes we discussed above: “stops,” “jumps” and “brushes.” In the following example, the character “o” as in “oak” is written with all three types of strokes. The first is a stop, the second a jump, and the third is a brush.

Compare the hiragana and katakana characters below. Hiragana characters are curved and looping, but katakana characters are straight and angled. Katakana also has fewer “jumps” and more “stops” and “brushes.”

Some hiragana and katakana characters look alike, like “ka” and “ki.” The picture mnemonics for these katakana characters are the same as the hiragana characters—another good reason you should master hiragana first.

Writing the correct stroke type in the correct order is important for forming balanced, legible characters. With practice you will get the hang of it. You can make your characters look more authentic by slightly tilting left-to-right strokes, as in stroke one in “o” (see above), rather than writing them straight across. Character strokes are generally written from left to right and top to bottom. Try to center each character in the middle of an imaginary box, not too far to the top, bottom, left, or right.

Writing Your Name in Japanese

Most beginning learners enjoy katakana because it is relatively simple to learn, and it is immediately useful. You write your name and your friends’ names in katakana. You can guess many of the katakana words found in Japanese texts you read. Soon reading and writing katakana will become second nature, and all your hard work will begin to pay off.

Try to find your name in the “Names in Katakana” lists provided on the . Only one Japanese spelling is given for all of the names with the same pronunciation, such as Amy, Ami, Amie and Aimee. The names are listed under the most common spelling. If you don’t see your name in the list and your name is a nickname, try looking for the formal version (i.e., “Richard” instead of “Rick”). If you still can’t find your name, it may not be one of the most common. Never fear, you can ask your teacher or a Japanese friend for help. Any name can be written in Japanese. Practice writing your name in the spaces provided (don’t worry if you leave some boxes unused).

Where Hiragana and Katakana Came From

Although hiragana characters look like the picture mnemonics in this book, they did not originally come from pictures. Hiragana characters were developed based on simplified cursive-style kanji during the Heian Period (794-1185 AD). China, one of the great civilizations of the ancient world, had a huge influence on its Asian neighbors, including Japan. Kanji were first introduced to Japan around the 5th century AD.

The Japanese upper classes made a serious study of Chinese language, religion and government, and along with adopting new perspectives and practices, they adopted thousands of words and the kanji used to write them. The earliest official documents were written in Chinese, and for a long time Chinese was considered the language of the educated. Japanese also used kanji, however, to write poetry and prose in Japanese. This was problematic since spoken Japanese and Chinese were very different, but the Japanese overcame this challenge by giving kanji new Japanese pronunciations, and by using some kanji as phonetic characters to be able to express native Japanese words and grammatical elements in writing.

Kanji used as phonetic characters were called kana or “borrowed names,” implying that using kanji to express only sounds was not the regular practice. The first set of kana, called man’yōgana (the line above the “o” indicates it is two syllables in length), was difficult to read because there were no one-to-one relationships between the characters and sounds, plus there were hundreds of them. Man’yōgana was also difficult to write because each phonetic syllable had to be written in kanji. To simplify things, two sets of kana called katakana and hiragana were developed over time. Katakana or “partial kana” as the name suggests was developed from parts of kanji (see the following example).

Writing with katakana was originally limited to men, and used in official documents. Hiragana or “common kana” was developed based on simplified versions of entire kanji characters (see example above). It was used in informal writing, such as letters and diaries, and it was referred to as onna-de or “woman’s hand.”

Ironically, during the Heian period while the men were attempting to write in “superior” Chinese, some women who learned to write in hiragana produced the finest literature of the period. The Tale of Genji written 1,000 years ago by a court lady named Murasaki Shikibu is generally regarded as the world’s first novel, and a classic. In time, men began using hiragana as well. Today Japanese is written with a mix of hiragana, katakana, kanji and romaji.

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is over 1,000 pages in English translation.

History aside, you may be wondering why Japanese still has two sets of phonetic characters. The main reason is that it makes reading easier—katakana words stand out in a text, like a highlighter. When you see a katakana word, you immediately know it falls into one of six categories:

1. Gairaigo or “loan words”

2. Foreign place names and personal names

3. Onomatopoeia (sound symbolic words), like “buzz,” “flip” and “bow wow,” which are much more numerous in Japanese than in English

4. Emphasis words—normally written in hiragana or kanji, but that the writer wants to draw attention to

5. Dictionaries entries of on-yomi or the “Chinese readings” of kanji

6. Others, such as transcriptions of the Ainu language (indigenous to northern Japan), and some official documents of pre-modern Japan

Gairaigo or “loan words,” such as konpyūtā (computer), nyūsu (news), and resutoran (restaurant), comprise the biggest category of katakana words, with tens of thousands in common use. Most gairaigo come from English, so even beginning learners can often correctly guess what a Japanese article is about just from scanning the text for gairaigo. Topics like sports, medicine, business, economy, technology, and science have numerous gairaigo.

Japanese Hiragana and Katakana for Beginners is the right place to begin your Japanese studies. As you learn kana you will be taking the first steps to mastering the Japanese writing system and its pronunciation. Taking Japanese in small steps will make it more manageable. As the Japanese proverb states, “Even dust piled up becomes a mountain.” or in other words, little things add up!

chiri mo tsumoreba yama to naru

(Even dust piled up becomes a mountain.)

Good luck as you embark on this new journey. As you increase your understanding of the Japanese people and their wonderful culture and language you will find fresh encouragement to carry on. One step at a time you can do anything. So, let’s get started. Turn the page and begin your journey.