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If you want to read Japanese or follow anime with Japanese subtitles, hiragana is a useful first step. Japanese commonly combines three scripts: hiragana, katakana and kanji. These are writing systems, not three interchangeable alphabets.
Hiragana, katakana and kanji
Hiragana is a phonetic script used for particles, grammatical endings and many words. A word of Japanese origin can be written in kanji, hiragana, or a combination; hiragana is not reserved only for “genuine Japanese words”.
Katakana is commonly used for loanwords, foreign names, sound effects and emphasis. レストラン (resutoran) comes from the word “restaurant”, adapted to Japanese sounds.
Kanji are characters historically adapted from Chinese writing. They represent meaning and have Japanese readings. Some began as pictographs, such as 川 (kawa, river), but many are more complex combinations of components. Kanji are not simply pictures of the things they name.
Where hiragana came from
Early Japanese writing used Chinese characters. Hiragana developed from cursive forms of characters used for their sounds. Court women played an important role in its literary use, but the story that women were universally forbidden to read and therefore invented an entirely separate script is too simplistic. Kanji forms in modern Japanese and Chinese also differ in many cases.
The basic hiragana sounds
The standard modern chart has 46 basic characters. Modified sounds use additional marks or combinations, such as が (ga), ぱ (pa) and きゃ (kya). Hiragana broadly represents Japanese sound units called morae; “one character equals one English syllable” is not a reliable rule.
The vowels are normally ordered あ・い・う・え・お. English comparisons are approximate; listen to recordings as well as reading these descriptions.
| Japanese | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| あ | a | a sound similar to the a in father, held short |
| い | i | a sound similar to ee in see, held short |
| う | u | a high back vowel with less lip rounding than English oo |
| え | e | a clear e sound, roughly like the vowel in bed |
| お | o | a clear o sound without the English oh glide |
The k-row combines k with the five vowels: か (ka), き (ki), く (ku), け (ke), こ (ko). Other rows include s, t, n, h, m, y, r and w sounds. Not every row has five modern characters, and some spellings have special readings, such as し (shi), ち (chi) and つ (tsu). ん is a separate moraic nasal whose pronunciation changes with neighboring sounds.
How hiragana is used
The reading of 花 (flower) is はな (hana). 鼻 (nose) also has the reading はな, so kanji and context help distinguish the words. Hiragana gives a reading; it does not break a kanji into meaning-bearing pieces.
Hiragana also writes particles. は is pronounced wa when it marks a topic. It comes after the topic, and is not a general subject marker. に has several functions, including a destination, a time, or the location of existence. か commonly marks a question at the end of a polite sentence.
Furigana
Small reading guides beside or above kanji are called furigana. They are often hiragana and help readers pronounce unfamiliar characters. They may be supplied for children, language learners or unusual names—not only because a character has many strokes.
What to learn next
Practice recognizing and writing the 46 basic characters, then learn voiced sounds, small ゃ・ゅ・ょ, the small っ, and long vowels. Hiragana-only material is useful at the beginning, but learning katakana and kanji gradually will make ordinary Japanese texts easier to read. Use the Japan Foundation kana materials for additional practice.