Learning Japanese: Hiragana/ひらがな

From the first month of the year, I oath to learn Japanese language AGAIN. lol Attempt no. infinity~Damn!

But this time I'm gonna be serious. Coz these books I've bought are really expensive. Well aside from that, it's really hard to start all over again and again. It's like repeating the basics the entire time and no progress at all. Time is surely wasted with this type of negative habit. So I'm gonna put a stop on this laziness and just get on with it step by step. Therefore, I decided to post here the progress I've made every single lessons. Just so I could track whether I've learned it well or I've missed out something. In my case right now, I'm already in advance lessons. Meaning the topic that I'll post here were the lessons I've learned beforehand.

Also let me clear some things in here, I'm not trying to teach alright. So stop thinking that coz I'm no pro on this. I'm just gonna use this blog to basically become my tracker, my motivation to study more so I could post in here. Oh yes more blog entries! It's like killing 2 birds with one stone! Yep that's it.

Also blog entries like this would just share about how I study. How I study japanese. The easiest way for me to familiarize with things. So without further ado, let me start with it.

But wait! I'll post first from the very basic. I'm not gonna jump to kanji level coz that one is the beast. So let's take baby steps first and deal with one of the Kana characters which is Hiragana. 

Although before we start right of the Hiragana characters, let's have basic understanding of what the Japanese Language  first is. This one's really helpful and it's a video from youtube.

There are further explanation regarding the sentence structure of japanese language discussed in the video. But I tried not to jump to other lessons and just stick first with familiarizing Hiragana and Katakana. The reason behind this is that I do not want to rely on the romaji version. This way I could see my progress in actually learning japanese characters. You'll realize that after some time you're already able to fluently read the hiragana and katakana characters in sentences. And just like what the guy said in the video, these served as annotations to help us read complex characters. A lot of japanese lessons I've encountered has this annotations besides the kanji word (furigana) and no romanization at all, so learning first the Kana system would greatly help us in comprehending what the sensei is saying. These are essentials in the japanese sentences, specially when japanese don't use spaces for each character or words. They'll serve as an indicator where the topic is, the object and a lot more uses. Ahh you'll know what I mean later on. lol

Hiragana／ひらがな
Hiragana order in japanese is a-i-u-e-o, while in my native language it's a-e-i-o-u. So when I study this hiragana, I used the order that I'm familiar with like:

あえいおう

a e i o u

かけきこく

ka ke ki ko ku

させしそす

sa se shi so su

たてちとつ

ta te chi to tsu

なねにのぬ

na ne ni no nu

はへひほふ

ha he hi ho fu

まめみもむ

me me mi mo mu

や＿＿よゆ

ya_ _yo yu

られりろる

ra re ri ro ru

わ＿＿を＿

wa_ _o _

As you can see, I've placed "_" on the Ya and Wa set. Because in the Japanese language "ye", "yi" and "wu" are already obsolete. Same thing with "we" and "wu".

In some of the hiragana characters, you'll just have to repeat the set of か、さ、た、は　and  add ゛dakuten/tenten and  ゜handakuten  in order to have another set of hiragana characters:

がげぎごぐ

ga ge gi go gu

ざぜじぞず

za ze ji zo zu

だでぢどづ

da de ji do zu

ばべびぼぶ

ba be bi bo bu

ぱぺぴぽぷ

pa pe pi po pu

See the difference?

As you can see, hiragana is composed of a consonant and a vowel to make one full character except the (a-i-u-e-o). But there is one character that does not need a vowel to make a character. And that is:

ん

ｎ

And when you thought it ends there, nope. There is also hiragana that's composed of 2 compound kana. And they are written in one normal size of character followed by small one:

きゃ　きょ　きゅ

kya  kyo  kyu

しゃ　しょ　しゅ

sha  sho  shu

ちゃ　ちょ　ちゅ

cha  cho  chu

にゃ　にょ　にゅ

nya  nyo  nyu

ひゃ　ひょ　ひゅ

hya  hyo  hyu

みゃ　みょ　みゅ

mya  myo  myu

りゃ　りょ　りゅ

rya  ryo  ryu

ぎゃ　ぎょ　ぎゅ

gya  gyo  gyu

じゃ　じょ　じゅ

ja 　 jo 　 ju

びゃ　びょ　びゅ

bya  byo  byu

ぴゃ　ぴょ　ぴゅ

pya  pyo  pyu

When writing these characters, there is also a stroke order. Just like when we learned about english alphabets. However, I did not really focus too much on it to be honest. For me as much as they do look alike then it's done for me as of the moment. But I'll probably master the stroke order on a later part. As of now, I'm still good. 

Below image shows the stroke order: 

In your studies, in terms of pronunciation, you'll need to understand also the importance of the double consonant sound and elongation of vowel sounds:

かった　（katta)

まって　(matte)

These words are examples of double consonant sound. the small っ （sokuon）is added. Since the character ta has the consonant letter of "t" then the small tsu will be placed before the character "ta" to double to sound of the consonant. Same thing with the words of:

ざっし　（zasshi)

きっぷ　(kippu）

As for the elongation of vowels, it occurs when 2 vowels are next to each other. Example:

おかあさん　（okaasan)

Since ”ka” has an “a" vowel on the character then followed by same sound "a" then the vowel sound of ah should be prolonged.

Those are the things mentioned above are the ones I can remember on the lesson I took about hiragana. Next one I'll post about is the Katakana. 

----------

Click here to redirect to our pages: