Hiragana & Katakana
Japanese Writing
There are 3 types of writing systems in Japanese language.
(1) Hiragana
(2) Katakana
(3) Kanji (Chinese characters)
Hiragana | Katakana | Kanji |
あ い う え お | ア イ ウ エ オ | 春 夏 秋 冬 |
(1) Hiragana & (2) Katakana are phonetic characters, so once you master each pronunciation of each letter, you can pronounce them correctly. There are 46 basic letters for hiragana & katakana in modern Japanese language.
See the table below. It has basic and combination forms of hiragana & katakana.
For more about (3) Kanji (Chinese characters) , please click here.
How to Read Hiragana
◆ Basic Hiragana – 46 characters
◆ Dakuon -20 characters (with two small dots)
a | i | u | e | o | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
G | ![]() |
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Z | ![]() |
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D | ![]() |
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B | ![]() |
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◆ Half-Dakuon -5 characters (with a small circle)
a | i | u | e | o | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
P | ![]() |
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◆ Combination 1 (with a small “ya, yu & yo”)
◆ Combination 2 (with two small dots and “ya, yu & yo”)
a | u | o | |
---|---|---|---|
gy | ![]() gy+a=gya |
![]() gy+u=gyu |
![]() gy+o=gyo |
j | ![]() j+a=ja |
![]() j+u=ju |
![]() j+o=jo |
by | ![]() by+a=bya |
![]() by+u=byu |
![]() by+o=byo |
py | ![]() py+a=pya |
![]() py+u=pyu |
![]() py+o=pyo |