Learn Japanese: Lesson 1

Japanese is pretty easy language bearing similarities to languages such as Hindi, Turkish etc. Japanese language uses 3 types of scripts, namely Hiragana, Katakana and the Kanji. The Hiragana and Katakana are simplified versions of Kanji Characters. Kanji characters directly derive from Chinese but because of being used in Japanese, most of the Kanji characters have two different types of readings which we shall learn of later. 

In this lesson you will learn Hiragana. No need to hurry, learn five characters each day and before you now it you would have mastered the Hiragana. So let's begin...

Above is the Hiragana chart. STOP, before you grab your pen to copy this or download this image...first...credits to Kaoyux of DeviantArt. Secondly, you must learn the stroke order of each character so in this lesson we will go in depth to learn the stroke order of first 5 hiragana characters.

Lets start with this:

This character is pronounced 'A'. 'A' as in 'father', not as in 'bat'. It is a vowel and the least you could say with this 'aa', something said when you spot your friend or colleague out of nowhere.

The stroke order for this character is:

Next character is:

This is pronounced 'I' as in 'sit', not as in 'bite'.

And the stroke order is:

Next is:

This is pronounced as 'U' a in 'put', not as in 'mule'

Stroke order is:

Then is:

Pronounced as 'E' as in 'bet', not as in 'seed'

Stroke order is:

And finally:

which is pronounced as 'O' as in 'bot', not as in 'boot'

Stroke order is:

Hope you liked it and will continue learning Japanese. In the Next lesson which I will publlish soon we will learn some words written with these newly learned Hiragana characters. If you have any questions you may leave a comment and I will surely reply.