Learning a new writing system is the coolest brainteaser in the world. Whether you are simply curious about the mysterious shapes or whether you intend to start studying the language, Alphabeautiful's intuitive method will help you read those characters in just a few hours.
Here are a few things you need to know about Hiragana before you start.
Hiragana is one of the three writing systems used in Japanese. Japanese combines Chinese characters, known as Kanji, with two other scripts: Hiragana and Katakana. Hiragana and Katakana are syllabaries — each character represents either a vowel sound (a, e, i, o, u) or a consonant-vowel combination.
Hiragana is used to clarify the pronunciation of Kanji characters and for grammatical endings while Katakana is used for foreign words like Ronaldo ⚽, Leclerc or computer.
Hiragana is what young Japanese students use when they first learn Kanji, which is why traditionally it is learned first.
Japanese words often mix all three writing systems, so if you're planning to study Japanese later, you will have to master both Hiragana and Katakana (as well as a large amount of Kanji characters).
We recommend starting with our Hiragana course.
Romaji is an (official) way to write Japanese sounds using the Roman alphabet. For example, "shi" is the romaji for し, pronounced as "shi". It's not as precise as phonetic characters — which are more often used by linguists — but it's the most popular way to learn and teach Japanese.
Our courses are entirely based on romaji.
Hiragana has 46 characters. Each one represents either a vowel (a, i, u, e, o) or a consonant-vowel combination like "na", "ki", or "po". You will also encounter small accents (diacritics) and two special characters that modify the sounds or lengthen vowels or consonants.
Don't worry, our progressive approach based on exercises will help you read all these characters in just a few days.
Our lessons include romaji "transliterations" which are good approximations of how to pronounce each character. We have also added audio sounds for convenience but they are not essential to reading practice.
If you want to study Japanese beyond this reading course, it is highly recommended to work with a native teacher or speaker.
Not exactly. All characters are essentially of the same size, however, you will see by the end of the course that a smaller version of some characters exists when they are combined with others. For example, よ (YO) in ちよ (CHIYO) is the same size as the first character, but in ちょ (CHO), よ is smaller to indicate a blended sound.
Like any writing system, Hiragana can be written in different styles or fonts — handwritten, with decorations (serif), or without (sans-serif). To help you grasp these details, we include a variety of fonts in our practice exercises.
At the moment this course is dedicated to reading. You can easily learn to read first without knowing how to draw the characters perfectly.
But we recognise that drawing characters is a fun and relaxing activity and it helps you memorize them, painting on a simple blank sheet can yield beautiful results.