Starting with hiragana.

To start learning japanese, you first need to learn kana! There are 3 Sets of characters the japanese language uses:

• Hiragana
• Katakana
• Kanji
• Romanjii - spelling the sound with alphanumeric characters (like neko or nyan)

Hiragana is used to build up japanese created words, and katakana is used to build up forgin words like komputa (Computer).

First we will learn the hiragana! When you have learn them you can start writing out basic words in japanese :)

As with english, japanese has vowels although they are ordered differently. Instead of AEIOU, its AIUEO, and the sounds they make never change. Thus あ will always make an ah sound even when paired with consonants, for example  か makes the kuah sound.

Learning these is very important, as romanji is not commonly used and can end up confusing you. You shoud copy out each of these 50times and make sure you properly memorise them.

Here are some words! Read and then write out the romanji next to them.

• にこ - Cat
• いぬ - Dog
• せんせい - Teacher
• うま - horse
• こんにちは - Hello (This is actually written with ha instead of wa! I'll explain this in grammar).

Write these in hiragana!

• hune - ship
• maru - circle
• kuto - Spider
• takai - expensive/tall!

Good luck! Pratice those hiragana!