h i r a g a n a   a n d   k a t a k a n a

the japanese phonetic syllabaries (kana) are much easier than they look. there are two syllabaries--hiragana and katakana--which contain exactly the same characters. essentially, they're nothing more than two different ways of writing the same sounds. unlike kanji, the chinese characters in japanese, each kana has no inherent meaning of its own, and usually only one pronunciation. the exceptions are ha, he, and wo, which when used as particles carry the pronunciations of wa, e, and o, respectively.

hiragana is used for writing native japanese words and names, and for verb/adjective stems (called okurigana). katakana is used much like italics are in english--for writing foreign words and names, for sound effects and onomatopoeic words, and for emphasis. they're usually easy to tell apart--hiragana is very cursive in appearance, fluid and curvalinear. katakana, on the other hand, appears very rough and abrupt, being made up of a handful of straight lines.

hiragana a i u e o ka ki ku ke ko sa shi su se so ta chi tsu te to na ni nu ne no ha hi fu he ho ma mi mu me mo ya yu yo ra ri ru re ro wa the syllables yi, ye, wi, wu, and we do not exist in modern japanese. there is no actual r or l sound in japanese; the syllable that is closest is usually romanized as ra, ri, ru, re, and ro. the only stand-alone consonant is n. see below for the voiced consonants g, z, j, d, b, and p. [w]o n

katakana a i u e o ka ki ku ke ko sa shi su se so ta chi tsu te to na ni nu ne no ha hi fu he ho ma mi mu me mo ya yu yo ra ri ru re ro wa the syllables yi, ye, wi, wu, and we do not exist in modern japanese. there is no actual r or l sound in japanese; the syllable that is closest is usually romanized as ra, ri, ru, re, and ro. the only stand-alone consonant is n. see below for the voiced consonants g, z, j, d, b, and p. [w]o n

the voiced consonants are formed by adding diacritical mark to the upper-right of the character. ka becomes ga, ta becomes da, sa becomes za, ha becomes ba or pa (depending on which mark), and so on. read the above examples out loud and it'll make perfect sense if you think about it.

the voiced versions of the characters chi and tsu (which become ji and zu) are rarely used in written japanese. typically, they only occur when a kanji whose pronunciation begins with either one are voiced by being included in a compound. if this doesn't make sense to you, don't worry--just learn how to recognize them.

ga gi gu ge go za ji zu ze zo da ji * zu * de do ba bi bu be bo pa pi pu pe po

ga gi gu ge go za ji zu ze zo da ji * zu * de do ba bi bu be bo pa pi pu pe po

* not commonly used