Hiragana
When learning a foreign language, understanding the writing system is fundamental to understanding the language. In Japanese, when you learn Hiragana, you learn how the language sounds. There forty-six hiragana characters. Below is a chart that includes all of the base hiragana characters.
| a | i | u | e | o | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ∅ | あ | い | う | え | お |
| k | か | き | く | け | こ |
| s | さ | し* | す | せ | そ |
| t | た | ち* | つ* | て | と |
| h | は^ | ひ | ふ* | へ^ | ほ |
| n | な | に | ぬ | ね | の |
| m | ま | み | む | め | も |
| r | ら | り | る | れ | ろ |
| y | や | ゆ | よ | ||
| w | わ | を^ | |||
| n/m | ん† |
*
- * し：the si hiragana is actually pronounced shi, much like the English word she. The Japanese language does not have a si sound, and Japanese people often have difficulties pronouncing si.
- * ち：the ti hiragana is pronounced chi, like in Cheetos. There is no ti sound in native Japanese words. However, recently, for words borrowed from English and other foreign languages, Japanese has started to use a て followed by a small い to form a ti sound. For example, てぃっしゅ (tisshu, tissue).
- * つ：the tu hiragana is pronounced tsu, like tsunami (which is a word English has taken from Japanese). Like し, the Japanese language does not have a tu sound, and any loan-words taken from foreign languages that have tu are usually pronounced as tsu.
- * ふ：the hu hiragana is often romanized as fu. However, this sound is neither an English h nor an f. In phonetics, it is called a "bilabial fricative." This means that the sound is made by pushing air between your lips, which are close together. This is contrasted with an h which uses your tongue, and an f, which uses your bottom lip and your top teeth. Try this: pretend like you're blowing out a candle. That's really similar to a ふ!
†
- † ん：the n/m hiragana is the only hiragana without a vowel sound. More on its pronunciation below!
^
- ^ は：normally pronounced as ha, this hiragana is pronounced as wa ONLY when it is acting as the word は.
- ^ を：even though this hiragana is located in the wo cell in the chart, it is most often pronounced simply as o, because the only word this hiragana is used in is the word を. Kind of ironic, I think.
- ^ へ：normally pronounced he, but pronounced e as the word へ.
Voiced Sounds
The basic hiragana only have nine consonants. That's compared to twenty-four consonant sounds in English! Fortunately, there are actually (a few) more consonant sounds that can be made by slightly modifying the hiragana in the k-, s-, t-, and h- rows. By adding two small, straight lines to the hiragana in these rows, it makes the consonant sounds voiced.
Try this: place your hand on your throat. Then, make a k sound. Then, make a g sound. Do you feel the difference? When you make a k sound, your vocal cords do not move. But when you make a g sound, you do make sound with your vocal cords. But also notice that your mouth and tongue move in exactly the same way when you produce a k and g. This is what dakuten, or ten-ten does to hiragana to change the sound.
Here is a chart that shows the modified versions of the hiragana with dakuten:
| a | i | u | e | o | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| g | が | ぎ | ぐ | げ | ご |
| z | ざ | じ* | ず | ぜ | ぞ |
| d | だ | ぢ* | づ* | で | ど |
| b | ば | び | ぶ | べ | ぼ |
*
- * じ：ji as in jinx
- * ぢ：also ji, just less commonly used.
- * づ：zu
In addition to dakuten, there is another sound-changing mark called a han-dakuten (half-dakuten) or maru (circle). The maru is only put on the h-row, and it changes the sound to a p- sound.
| a | i | u | e | o | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| p | ぱ | ぴ | ぷ | ぺ | ぽ |
Consonants
Most consonants are pronounced as you would expect in Japanese, which is really nice! However, there are a few things that you should learn right away to avoid making mistakes in pronunciation.
The Japanese “r”
The big, glaring exception to the statement above is the Japanese r sound. We do not have an equivalent sound in English, at least formally. In phonetics, the Japanese r is known as a "voiced alveolar tap." Let me try to break down what that means. First of all, it's voiced, which means that your vocal cords move as you make it. The alveolar tap means that your tongue taps the roof of your mouth close to the back of your teeth. In English, we often get lazy when we pronounce the tt in better or butter and make it into a voiced alveolar tap. Give it a go, and try to be as lazy as possible. Congrats! That's the Japanese r!
ん
There is one hiragana character that does not have a vowel, and that's ん. ん can make three different sounds, but it is 100% regular when you use each sound.
- By default, ん sounds like an n.
- Examples: なんじ (nan-ji, what time), にほん (nihon, Japan)
- If ん comes before a p- sound, it sounds like an m. NOTE: I romanize ん as n no matter how it sounds, but please remember this!
- Examples: せんぱい (senpai, senior) => this word is pronounced sempai!, えんぴつ (enpitsu, pencil) => empitsu
- The last way to pronounce ん is the toughest and rarest. To be honest, you will be understood just fine if you don't practice this, but you will sound much more like a native if you follow this rule. That is, when ん comes before a g- sound, it should be pronounced like the ng in the English word sing. When you make the g sound, there should be a nasal-type sound at the same time.
- Examples: にほんご (nihongo, Japanese language), まんが (manga, comic)
Consonant Duplication (Gemination)
In Japanese, you can create a "long" consonant sound by adding a small つ before another hiragana that starts with a consonant sound. This is called either a そくおん (sokuon, urgent sound) or ちいさいつ (chiisai-tsu, small tsu) in Japanese. When you use a sokuon, one of two things will happen:
- You can't hold the consonant sound for a length of time. Like か. Try holding a k- sound. You can't really do that. That's because a k-sound is a stop, i.e. you stop the air and then release it to make this sound. In this case, simply do not produce sound for a beat, then continue as normal. t- hiragana also follow this rule.
- Example: さっか (sakka, author)
- If you can hold the consonant sound over a length of time (think of し—we often quiet each other with a long sshhhhhh!), then hold the consonant for an extra beat. s- hiragana also follow this rule.
- Example: いっさい (issai, one-year-old)
Vowels
As you can see, the first row contains characters that simply represent vowel sounds. There are five pure vowels in Japanese: a, i, u, e, and o. Here are some examples of pronunciation to help you remember them:
- a: The a in bra
- i: The ee in free
- u: We do not have a sound that is exactly equivalent to Japanese u. However, the ew in new or the oo in noodles are very similar. The difference is that the lips are a bit closer together and more rounded in Japanese.
- e: The e in egg.
- o: The o in old.
These are the only five vowel sounds in Japanese. Seriously.
Long Vowels
Vowels can be marked as long by adding an extra vowel hiragana afterwards. Long vowels do not sound different than their short counterparts! They are just held for an extra beat.
- あ：add an あ to the end of any hiragana that ends in an -a sound to lengthen it. Example: おかあさん (okaasan, mother)
- い：add an い to make a long -i sound. Example: いい (ii, good)
- う：add an う to make a long -u sound. Example: くうき (kuuki, air)
- え：add either an え or an い to make a long -e sound. Examples: おねえさん (oneesan, sister), けいご (keigo, polite speech)
- お：add either an お or an う to make a long -o sound. Examples: とおる (tooru, to go by), いもうと (imouto, little sister)
Note: the two different versions of long -e and -o are standardized. けいご is always written with an い. You cannot use an え, as in けえご, even though they would sound the same.
Vowel Glides
Genki calls them "contracted sounds." You can add a small hiragana that starts with a y- sound after hiragana in the い column (except for い itself) to create a "gliding" sound.
Examples
- ちゃ：cha (sounds very similar to the cha in chai tea)
- きゅ：kyu (sounds a lot like the English word queue)
- しょ：sho (sounds like show)
Table
| ～ゃ | ～ゅ | ～ょ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| き | きゃ | きゅ | きょ |
| し | しゃ | しゅ | しょ |
| ち | ちゃ | ちゅ | ちょ |
| ひ | ひゃ | ひゅ | ひょ |
| に | にゃ | にゅ | にょ |
| み | みゃ | みゅ | みょ |
| り | りゃ | りゅ | りょ |
Morae
A mora is a unit of time in speech. They are when I've been referring to as "beats" earlier this lesson. In English, we use syllables for speech timing. You can use syllables in Japanese, too, but morae are much more helpful. When you pronounce Japanese, one hiragana or vowel glide equals one mora. For example:
- ひらがな (hiragana, hiragana lol)ーfour morae
- かんじ (kanji, kanji)ーthree morae (the ん is its own mora)
- おんな (onna, woman)ーthree morae
- きっぷ (kippu, ticket)ーthree morae (the sokuon is its own mora)
- しゅふ (shufu, homemaker)ーtwo morae (しゅ is one mora)
- じゅう (juu, ten)ーtwo morae (long vowels are their own mora)
- はーone mora :(
Now that you know what makes a mora, it is important to pronounce morae correctly! Each mora in a word takes approximately the same time to pronounce. Of course, certain things like emphasis and pauses can change this in real-life speech, but otherwise mora length stays consistent in an utterance. This is so so important, because if you screw up mora length, in some cases, you may actually change the meaning of a word.
Take, for example, the two words つき (tsuki, moon), and つうき (tsuuki, airflow). The only difference between these two words is the long -u sound in つうき. In order to not confuse these words, be sure to work on keeping each mora a similar length!
Pitch Accent
Professor Valentyna mentioned this, but I believe it deserves a bit more attention. Japanese uses pitch to represent accents in words. This is in contrast to stress, which is used in European languages. What's the difference?
In stress-accent systems, the stressed syllable often becomes louder, slightly longer, and maybe gets a somewhat higher pitch.
In contrast, the only thing that changes in a pitch-accent system is the pitch. This means that in Japanese, the accented morae in a word still last the same amount of time.
It is true that you shouldn't dive deep into pitch accent right away unless you are interested in it (like me :D). My recommendation is to listen to native speakers and try to replicate the sounds they make. You will start to pick up pitch accent that way. The worst thing you can do, though, is give accent to words incorrectly, so if you aren't confident about your pronunciation of a particular word, pronounce it with a flat accent; that is, (as always), keep the mora length consistent, keep the volume consistent, and keep the pitch mostly consistent through the whole word (variation based on emotion and emphasis is a good thing).
If you're interested in learning more, check out Dogen on YouTube, particularly his pitch accent in 10 minutes video or Japanese phonetics series.
More Resources
There are lots of resources available to help you on your hiragana-learning journey!
Tofugu has made an Ultimate Guide to Hiragana which has audio and mnemonics to get the sounds firmly ingrained in your brain, plus a printable Hiragana Mnemonics Chart (Tofugu is also an excellent resource for all kinds of things Japanese)
RealKana is a gamified study tool that can help you remember the roumaji transcriptions of all the hiragana and katakana.
Lots of Examples!
At some point, I will create a lot of example words that utilize everything you see above. But right now, I have more content to make!!
Up Next
Next, I have created three sets of hiragana flashcards for your use. Down the line, I will be creating a way for you to manage your own decks of flashcards right here on this site. There will be a star button to add a deck to your personal collection, which can be curated and studied at your own pace. I also want to add a spaced-repetition system, which is a well-proven way to help memorize information. For now, enjoy the Hiragana cards!