The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of the following:

• Hiragana (ひらがな) - Hiragana is a phonetic script that is used to write native Japanese words and grammatical elements. For example おはよう, meaning "good morning", is written in Hiragana and is pronounced ohayou.
• Katakana (カタカナ) - Katakana is a phonetic script that is predominantly used to write words borrowed from other foreign languages, such as camera カメラ (pronounced kamera), hotel ホテル (pronounced hoteru) and bus バス (pronounced basu).
• Kanji (漢字) - Kanji are logographic Chinese characters, historically adapted from Chinese writing scripts, that are used in Japanese writing. Logographic writing systems use symbols (logograms) to represent entire words, with Chinese characters being a primary example of logograms. For example, the Chinese character 山 means "mountain". In Japanese, 山 is pronounced "yama" (やま using the Hiragana phonetic script).

On this page, we provide resources that will facilitate both the pronunciation of phonetic units of sound (or syllables) in Japanese, and the study of the Hiragana phonetic script.

The resources provided on this page should be used as part of a structured introductory course to Japanese.

Kana

Hiragana and Katakana are both kana systems. Kana are the symbols used to write phonetic units of sound in Japanese, where each kana character corresponds to one syllable. Hiragana and Katakana represent the same set of phonetic sounds (or syllables) and are pronounced identically. They differ in the way that they are written and when they are used. Hiragana is used for native Japanese words and grammatical elements, whilst Katakana is predominantly used for words borrowed from other foreign languages.

Base Characters

Kana consists of 48 base characters (characters that are represented by a single kana character, also referred to as monographs). These 48 base characters are listed below, along with their representation in Hiragana.

• 5 singular vowels: あ (a), い (i), う (u), え (e), お (o)
• 42 consonant-vowel unions, such as か (ka), て (te), め (me), ろ (ro), わ (wa)
• 1 singular consonant: ん (n)

Gojūon 五十音

These base characters are commonly ordered using the gojūon 五十音 (literally meaning "fifty sounds") ordering system as shown in the interactive table below.

Click on each of the Hiragana characters in the interactive table below to hear their pronunciation in Japanese and to view their stroke order.

	a	i	u	e	o
∅
k
s
t
n
h
m
y
r
w

Diacritics

Diacritics, also known as marks or accents, are glyphs that are added to a letter to change its sound. For example, in English, the pronunciation of the noun "résumé" is differentiated from the verb "resume" by the addition of a diacritic to the letter "é". In this section, we shall introduce the diacritics found in the Japanese language.

Dakuten 濁点 Diacritic

The dakuten (濁点) diacritic, denoted by the ゛marker, transforms a voiceless consonant to a voiced consonant. The dakuten diacritic can be applied to selected base characters, generating a set called dakuon (濁音) as shown in the interactive table below.

Click on each of the dakuon (濁音) in the interactive table below to hear their pronunciation in Japanese.

	a	i	u	e	o
g
z
d
b

Handakuten 半濁点 Diacritic

The handakuten (半濁点) diacritic, denoted by the ゜marker, transforms syllables beginning with a h or f sound into a p sound, generating a set called handakuon (半濁音) as shown in the interactive table below.

Click on each of the handakuon (半濁音) in the interactive table below to hear their pronunciation in Japanese.

	a	i	u	e	o
p

Palatalization

In phonetics, palatalization transforms the pronunication of a consonant such that part of the tongue is moved close to the roof of the mouth (an area of the mouth known as the hard palate which is a thin horizontal bony plate).

Yōon 拗音

In Japanese, a small version of the characters ya (や), yu (ゆ) or yo (よ) may be added to the syllables ending in i, palatalizing the i sound to a, u or o sounds respectively. The addition of the y characters to the syllables ending in i generates a set of syllables called yōon 拗音 (ようおん). The subset of yōon 拗音 (which are digraphs since they are represented by two kana characters, as opposed to monographs which are represented by only one kana character) applied to relevant base characters is shown in the interactive table below.

Click on each of the yōon (拗音) in the interactive table below to hear their pronunciation in Japanese.

Yōon 拗音 with Diacritics

The set of yōon 拗音 also includes the syllables transformed by both the dakuten (濁点) and handakuten (半濁点) diacritics as shown in the interactive table below.

Click on each of the yōon (拗音) in the interactive table below to hear their pronunciation in Japanese.

Sokuon 促音

A small version of the tsu character, っ, is called the sokuon (促音) and is predominantly used to geminate a consonant - that is to double it. In Japanese, the use of the sokuon changes the pronunication, and hence meaning, of a word. For example, the English word "slope" is translated into Japanese as "saka" and can be written in Hiragana as さか. By adding a sokuon, さか (saka) becomes さっか (sakka) which means "author" in Japanese.

Hiragana Table

A free table containing the complete and organised set of Hiragana, along with other useful Japanese learning resources, can be downloaded in PDF format from the japanese-lesson.com website.

Hiragana Writing Practice

Free worksheets to practice writing Hiragana characters with the correct stroke order, along with an amazing library of other Japanese learning resources, can be downloaded in PDF format from the Japan Foundation (Sydney) website. The Japan Foundation, Sydney is the Australian arm of The Japan Foundation, a non-profit cultural organisation which was established by the Japanese government to promote cultural and intellectual exchange between Japan and other nations.