Hiragana: The Sounds of Japanese

One symbol, one beat

Hiragana (ひらがな) is the first of Japanese's three scripts and the one every learner starts with. It isn't an alphabet of single letters but a syllabary: each symbol is a complete sound, almost always a consonant plus a vowel. か is always ka, ぬ is always nu — no silent letters, no surprises. Learn the 46 basic symbols and a handful of rules, and you can pronounce every word in this guide correctly.

Those rules all rest on one idea: the mora, or beat. Each kana takes exactly one beat, and the beats are evenly timed, like a metronome. なまえ ("name") is three even beats: な・ま・え. The nasal ん gets a full beat of its own, so にほん ("Japan") is also three beats: に・ほ・ん. English squashes its unstressed syllables; Japanese gives every beat its full length — and as you'll see below, getting the beat count right is often the only difference between two completely different words.

The 46 basic kana: the gojūon chart

All 46 basic kana fit on one chart, the gojūon (五十音ごじゅうおん, "fifty sounds"). The five vowels in the top row anchor everything: a as in father, i as in machine, u like "oo" with relaxed lips, e as in pet, and o as in go but pure, with no glide. Every other row is simply a consonant married to those same five vowels.

Five readings break the pattern and are marked in bold: し is shi (never "si"), ち is chi, つ is tsu, ふ is a soft fu blown between the lips (halfway between f and h), and を sounds identical to お — it survives only as the object particle you'll meet in chapter 9. The gaps in the y- and w-rows are sounds that merged with the plain vowels centuries ago.

A tip before you practise: many printed fonts join strokes that handwriting keeps separate. Handwritten き and さ have a detached bottom stroke, and り is written as two strokes even when your font shows one curve. If your writing doesn't match the font, you're probably doing it right.

Dakuten and handakuten: two marks, 25 more sounds

Japanese doesn't need new symbols for ga or pa. Two small marks added to kana you already know do all the work:

• Dakuten ( ゛) — two short dashes that voice the consonant: か ka → が ga, さ sa → ざ za, た ta → だ da, は ha → ば ba.
• Handakuten ( ゜) — a small circle, used only on the は row, turning h into p: は ha → ぱ pa.

Note the two pairs of lookalikes: じ and ぢ are both pronounced ji, and ず and づ are both zu. Modern spelling almost always uses じ and ず — ぢ and づ turn up only in a few compound words (see the FAQ below).

Small-kana combinations: きゃ, きゅ, きょ

Take any kana from the い column (き, し, ち, に…) and add a small ゃ, ゅ or ょ, and the two fuse into a single one-beat sound: き + small ゃ = きゃ kya. These combinations — there are 33 of them — fill in sounds like kyo, sha and ju that the basic chart can't write.

The size of the second kana matters enormously. A full-size や is its own beat; a small ゃ melts into the kana before it:

• びょういん byōin (4 beats) — hospital
• びよういん biyōin (5 beats) — beauty salon

One extra beat, and your taxi takes you somewhere very different.

The small っ: a beat of silence

The small っ (the sokuon) is never pronounced "tsu". It is a silent beat: you set your mouth in position for the next consonant, hold it for one full mora, then release. In romaji it's written by doubling that consonant:

• きって kitte (き・っ・て, 3 beats) — stamp
• きっぷ kippu — ticket
• ざっし zasshi — magazine
• ちょっと chotto — a little

Just like the small ゃ, the small っ changes meaning, not just sound: おと oto is "sound", but おっと otto is "husband". When you say がっこう ("school"), count it out — が・っ・こ・う, four even beats with a genuine moment of silence in the middle. Resist the English urge to rush through it.

Long vowels: おう, おお and えい

A long vowel is the same vowel held for two beats instead of one. Hiragana writes it by adding a second vowel kana — but the kana you add isn't always the one you'd guess:

A handful of common words spell long ō with お instead of う: おおきい (big), とおい (far), こおり (ice). And えい is pronounced as one smooth long ē in natural speech, so せんせい sounds like "sensē". In katakana — next chapter — every long vowel is written with a single dash instead, the chōonpu ー, as in コーヒー (coffee).