Basics: Characters Hiragana Hiragana is the first of the three Japanese alphabets to learn. Hiragana is a phonetic alphabet, where each character represents a syllable. Hiragana is generally the first of the alphabets used, and is used for many purposes. Until one broadens their knowledge of kanji, they can use hiragana in place of the kanji they don’t know. Additionally, hiragana is used as particles, and is also used as accompanying characters to verbs, called okurigana. Double Consonants: kk, pp, tt, etc. are expressed in hiragana as a small "tsu" (っ) before the kana. Katakana Katakana is the second phonetic Japanese alphabet. Double Consonants: kk, pp, tt, etc. are expressed in katakana as a small “tsu” (ッ) before the kana For example, shotto, meaning “shot” is written as ショット. There are small versions of “ア,” “イ,” “ウ,” “エ,” and “オ” that are “ァ,” “ィ,” “ゥ,” “ェ,” and “ォ.” “ti” and “tu” sounds now commonly written as “ティ,” and “トゥ.” Other Alphabets
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Learn Japanese Youkoso - Welcome Welcome to the Grammar Lessons section of Nihongo o Narau. This section is intended to break Japanese down into manageable sections starting from the very basics. Don't like Romanized characters? If your computer can view Japanese characters, the lessons are also available in Japanese characters. Contents General Tips on Japanese Japanese Word Order Particles Articles (a, an, the) Counters Nouns and Pronouns Name Suffixes Lesson 1: It's a...