How to Learn Hiragana: The 46 Characters and a Plan for Your First Week

Hiragana is the first thing to learn in Japanese, and it's a small job. There are 46 basic characters, each one stands for a sound, and unlike English letters they're almost always read the same way. Half an hour a day gets most people through the chart in about a week.

You won't be fast after a week. You'll be sounding words out one character at a time, the way a six-year-old reads. That's fine. Speed comes from reading, and you can't start reading until the chart is in your head.

The 46 basic characters

The chart is a grid. Five vowels run across the top (a, i, u, e, o) and each row adds a consonant in front of them. Read it row by row, left to right: あ い う え お, then か き く け こ, and so on. Japanese dictionaries, phone contact lists and karaoke songbooks are all sorted in this order, so it's worth learning the rows in sequence.

Five sounds don't match the pattern of their row: し is shi (there's no "si"), ち is chi, つ is tsu, ふ is fu, and を is pronounced the same as お. The f in ふ is softer than an English f. Your teeth don't touch your lip, you just blow air through loosely closed lips.

The r row isn't an English r either. The tongue taps once behind the top teeth, somewhere between r, l and a quick d. And ん is the only character that's a consonant by itself. It never starts a word.

Two small marks add 25 more characters

You don't need new shapes for g, z, d, b and p. Two short strokes at the top right of a character, called dakuten, turn k into g, s into z, t into d and h into b. A small circle, the handakuten, turns h into p. It only ever appears on the h row.

じ and ぢ are both pronounced ji, and ず and づ are both zu. In practice you'll write じ and ず almost every time. ぢ and づ only show up in a handful of words, such as つづく (tsuzuku, to continue) and はなぢ (hanaji, nosebleed).

Combination sounds

Take a consonant character from the i column (き, し, ち, に and so on), put a small ゃ, ゅ or ょ after it, and the two blend into one sound. き plus small ゃ is きゃ (kya), one beat, not ki-ya.

The size of the second character matters. びよういん (biyouin) is a beauty salon. びょういん (byouin) is a hospital. Mixing those up is a classic beginner story, and the only difference on the page is whether よ is written small.

The characters everyone mixes up

Some hiragana differ by a single stroke. Nearly every learner confuses the same sets, so it saves time to study them side by side from the start instead of waiting to get them wrong.

There's a pattern in the last three rows: ぬ, ね and る are the ones with a loop. If you can remember which sounds have the loop, the other members of each set sort themselves out. あ and お, and い and り, are two more pairs worth checking yourself on.

One more thing that confuses people early: printed fonts and handwriting don't always match. In most fonts the bottom of き and さ is joined to the rest of the character, and り is one connected stroke. In handwriting those are often written with a gap. They're the same characters.

Small っ doubles the next consonant

A small っ isn't pronounced tsu. It marks a short pause, one beat long, before the consonant that follows. In romaji that consonant is written twice.

• きて (kite) means "come" as a request. きって (kitte) is a postage stamp.
• さか (saka) is a slope. さっか (sakka) is a writer.
• がっこう (gakkou) is school, and ざっし (zasshi) is a magazine.

Long vowels

Japanese vowels can be held for two beats, and the length changes the word. おばさん (obasan) is an aunt. おばあさん (obaasan) is a grandmother. To lengthen a, i or u, you add another あ, い or う: おかあさん (okaasan, mother), おにいさん (oniisan, older brother), くうき (kuuki, air).

The e and o sounds are less tidy. A long e is usually written えい, so せんせい (teacher) is spelled sensei but sounds closer to "sensee". A long o is usually written おう, as in ありがとう (arigatou) and とうきょう (Tokyo). A small group of words use ええ and おお instead: おねえさん (oneesan, older sister), おおきい (ookii, big), とおい (tooi, far).

おう isn't always a long vowel. In a verb like おもう (omou, to think), the う is the verb ending and is pronounced separately.

Three characters that change sound as particles

When は is used as the topic particle, it's read wa. That's why こんにちは ends in は but is pronounced konnichiwa. The particle へ is read e, and を, which is only ever used as a particle in modern Japanese, is read o. Everywhere else, は is ha and へ is he.

A plan for the first week

This assumes 20 to 30 minutes of study a day, plus a couple of two-minute reviews later in the day. Write each character by hand a few times as you learn it. You may never handwrite Japanese again, but writing forces you to notice where each stroke goes, and that's what lets you tell ぬ from め.

• Day 1. The vowels, the k row and the s row: 15 characters. Read them aloud in order until you can say the rows without looking.
• Day 2. The t and n rows, 10 more. Start by testing yourself on yesterday's 15 before you add anything.
• Day 3. The h and m rows. You now know 35, and look-alike pairs such as は and ほ or ぬ and め are in play. Put them next to each other and write both.
• Day 4. The last 11: や ゆ よ, the r row, わ, を and ん. Test yourself on the full chart in random order, not row by row.
• Day 5. Dakuten and handakuten. There are no new shapes, so spend most of the session on the look-alike table above.
• Day 6. Combination sounds, small っ and long vowels. Read the example words in this post aloud.
• Day 7. Read real words with the romaji covered. The list below is a start. From today, stop writing romaji in your notes.

If a day goes badly, repeat it rather than pushing on. Two extra days cost nothing. Carrying shaky characters forward does, because every new row makes the old ones easier to confuse.

Ten words to practice on. Cover the middle column first.

What to do once you can read it

Drop romaji completely. It feels slower for a week or two, and then it doesn't. Learners who keep romaji around as a safety net tend to keep reading the romaji.

Spaced repetition works well for kana: a flashcard app will keep showing you the characters you miss and quietly retire the ones you know. After that, katakana uses the same 46 sounds with different shapes, so it goes faster. And once hiragana is comfortable you can start on kanji, since kanji readings are written in hiragana. Our JLPT N5 kanji guide covers the first set most people learn.

Questions people ask about hiragana