Welcome to our very first hiragana lesson on zonjineko.com

In this lesson we’ll be going through the first five hiragana characters, which are equivalent, in terms of letters, to the vowels in English eg a, e, i, o, u. The first difference you’ll notice is their order, which can be confusing for English-speaking beginners as we are so used to the English vowel order but over time the Japanese way becomes second nature.

The Hiragana vowel order is a (あ), i (い), u (う), e (え), o (お). The table below shows the five Hiragana plus basic examples to see how they are used in real life.

Hiragana	Romaji	Example	Meaning
あ	a	あし (a-shi)	foot,leg
い	i	いち (i-chi)	one
う	u	うま (u-ma)	horse
え	e	えき (e-ki)	station
お	o	あお (a-o)	blue

There is no special secret to learning hiragana – you just have to spend the time going over these and eventually they will stick in your brain. You can then move on to katakana, which uses the same vowel order and lastly, kanji.

One thing that I read all the time on the interwebs are people berating others on Japanese forums by saying that they learned the entire hiragana in one afternoon or in 10 minutes or overnight.

While I am sure there are people with extraordinary language and memorisation powers, the rest of us will probably need a little longer so please don’t get bogged down by comparing yourself to others. Work at your own speed and get it done your way. If you still haven’t learned the hiragana after a year then yes you may have a problem but otherwise don’t worry about it.

For now it’s important you nail these first five hiragana as the pattern of letters is the basis most of the rest of the hiragana and katakana.

I have included a basic worksheet for you to practice writing and memorising the characters. The full chart lists all of the basic Hiragana on one page with the romaji on one page and writing practice on the other so you can test yourself.

• Download Hiragana AIUEO Worksheet
• Download Basic Hiragana Chart

Also check out Wikipedia’s Hiragaga page for a more technical background of the Hiragana.

Add Your Comment | zonjineko! Free Monthly Newsletter