こんにちは！ Are you ready to begin learning hiragana with me? This will be my first and most important hiragana lesson for you, as it will build up your ability to pronounce almost every other hiragana later on down the road. You see, today we will be learning the vowels, or 「あ、い、う、え、お」(A, I, U, E, O, respectively) column, and these five hiragana will be attached to almost every other hiragana found. These same vowels sounds will be repeated quite often with various consonants, so let’s learn these five hiragana perfectly before moving forward with more!

あ

「あ」 is the very first bit of hiragana we will learn together. 「あ」 is pronounced like the “a” in “bar”. Or, like when you visit a dentist, and the dentist tells you to open your mouth wide, and say, “ahh”. To help you remember this kana, think back to the dentist and how your mouth would like wide open, as shown below.

い

「い」is the next kana we will learn today. 「い」is pronounced like the “e” sound in “eat”. You also hear this sound while saying, “Hawaii”, so a good way to remember this kana will be to picture two palm trees next to each other in Hawaii as seen below.

う

「う」is the third kana we will learn today. 「う」is pronounced like the “oo” sound in “moo”. One way to picture this kana to help you remember it is to think of a big bug on a friends’ ear. You would probably tell them, “Eww, you have a bug on your ear!” The end of the “you” has the “oo” sound we’re looking for here.

え

「え」is the fourth kana we will learn today. 「え」is pronounced like the “eh” sound at the end of “latté”. To help remember this sound, think of an elf placing ornaments on a Christmas tree. (While drinking that latté of course. lol)

お

「お」is the fifth and final kana we will learn today. 「お」is pronounced like the “o” in “hole”. A great way to remember this sound, is to picture yourself outside golfing, and getting a hole in one. You’d be surprised, and say, “Oh! I got a hole in one!” (Trust me, I would be surprised at this feat too, and say exactly that. Lol!)

Note:

You might be thinking, “wait, I see the same kana for both ‘a’ and ‘o’, what gives?!” Ahhh, not so fast my young padawan… These two kana look very similar, but there is a big distinction. Look closely at both 「あ、お」and try to see the difference between the two. As you’re studying these both, keep in mind the pictures that accompany them both, and it’ll help you to discern which is which. Also, if you do homework #3, it will really solidify the differences between the two. 😉

Homework

Okay everyone, that concludes today’s lesson on the vowels found in Hiragana. And as such, I have some homework for you to do while I compile the next lesson. “Homework?! I thought this would be a cake walk! What gives Jessica?!” Hahaaa… 😂 Yeah, no you have homework to do my friends. Trust me, if you don’t do the homework, you won’t remember what you’ve spent your precious time trying to learn. It’s not difficult, and you might even find it somewhat enjoyable… I hope. Remember, we are building the foundation to your own Japanese Language castle. And if your foundation isn’t solid, imagine how the rest of your Japanese will be…

1. First, I want you to visit this website to do some Drag n’ Drop Hiragana. For now, only focus on the five kana you learned above and ignore the rest. You don’t have to worry about timing yourself either, you just want to be able to find the hiragana you’ve learned, and know which of those five correspond with their correct romaji sounds. (You’ll focus on the last row on the right.) If you do want to time yourself before doing the second piece of homework, then aim for all five hiragana within 10 seconds. I think that should be a worthwhile challenge, don’t you? 😉

2. Secondly, I want you to download this pdf worksheet (print it out too if you’d like), and practice writing (or typing) in the corresponding romaji for the kana shown. Do your absolute best not to cheat, because you’ll only be cheating yourself and handicapping your ability to learn the rest of the hiragana and Japanese language. Even if it takes you a bit to recall which kana goes with which romaji sound (English sound), that is perfectly fine. The goal here is to recognize and recall what you have learned above.

3. Your final piece of homework, is also an optional one. This piece of homework is perfect for anyone who wishes to learn how to write in Japanese while learning how to read and speak it as well. For me, this helped to really solidify the hiragana I was learning. I’m the type of person though, that takes a lot of notes to better remember what I’ve learned. And if you’re one of those types of people too, trust me, this is the best piece of homework I can give you. Simply download this pdf and print it out. Only practice sheet number one, as we don’t want to pack your brain with more than it can handle. (Information overload can be a real drawback, so learn slowly, even if you want to learn Japanese at lightspeed.)

That covers our entire vowels lesson today! I hope you all followed what I was covering well enough, and if you have any questions about this lesson, please leave a comment below. I will answer as soon as I am able! Until then, good luck with your studies, and I look forward to seeing you next week for the next installment of this Learning Hiragana series.

がんばって！
Jessica