みなさん、こんにちは！I hope you guys have been studying and enjoying your summer! Today will be your first duo Hiragana column lesson! That’s right, today you will not be learning only 1 column, but 2, at the same time. That means today we will be learning 10 new hiragana! Are you ready for this? I think you are, so let’s move forward shall we?

The ten hiragana we will be learning today are as follows: “na, ni, nu, ne, no, ha, hi, hu/fu, he, ho” or 「な、に、ぬ、ね、の、は、ひ、ふ、へ、ほ」 respectively. They all follow the same pattern that we have seen in the last few lessons. And there are no exceptions really for these two hiragana columns. Besides, after learning all about the T-Column, the S-Column, the K-Column, and the Vowels, you should really be getting a lot better at these, and expect something a little harder today, right? Well, let’s double up our learning and see just how far we’ve come!

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な

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「な」 is the first of the ten hiragana we will learn today. 「な」 is pronounced “na”, and is the simple combination of the “n” sound and the 「あ」 kana we learned a month ago. (Wow, I can’t believe it’s been a whole month now!) This is an easy one to remember and you will see it quite a bit throughout Japanese. To help you better remember this one, imagine a beaver gnawing on a tree. The little floaty “t” looking part would be the tree, and the bottom part would be the beaver.

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に

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「に」 is the second of the ten hiragana we will learn today. 「に」 is pronounced “ni”, and is a simple combination of the “n” sound and the 「い」 vowel. The best way to remember this one, is to imagine that this kana looks and sounds like a knee.

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ぬ

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「ぬ」 is the third of the ten hiragana we will learn today. 「ぬ」 is pronounced “nu”, kinda like “new”, and is a simple combination of the “n” sound with the 「う」 vowel we learned early on. This kana will look similar to some others found within the chart, and the way I best pick it out from the others is to notice the cute little curl at the end of the second stroke. A good way to remember the kana itself, is to picture a person riding his new bicycle!

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ね

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「ね」 is the fourth of the ten hiragana we will learn today. 「ね」 is pronounced “neh”, a similar sound to the “ne” part of “nest”. It is a combination of the “n” sound and the 「え」 vowel we learned. To picture this kana in your mind, look for the nest on a tree branch within this kana.

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の

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「の」 is the fifth of the ten hiragana we will learn today. Yes, this is our half-way point of the lesson! 「の」 is very easy to pronounce and recognize. It is pronounced “no”, just as the English word “no” is. Simple, right? Well, it is a simple combination of the “n” sound and the 「お」 kana we learned a month ago! The best way to picture this hiragana in your mind is to envision a sign telling you “no parking!”

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は

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「は」 is the sixth of the ten hiragana we will learn today. 「は」 is very easy to pronounce, and don’t laugh at this, but it is pronounced like “hah!” You know, hahaha! Yes, I’m terrible at jokes. Especially in the written form. Haha! (I seriously hope you laughed at least a little.) Anyhow, you know how the pattern works, so this is just an “h” sound and an 「あ」 sound. There are two ways to envision this kana… The first being that if you look closely enough at it, you can almost see an English letter “H” and a very small “a” under the right side of the “H”. The second way, which is best for people who like hockey, is to picture a hockey player on the ice! You can see that below.

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ひ

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「ひ」 is the seventh of the ten hiragana we will learn today. 「ひ」 is pronounced like “he” and is the simple combination of the “h” sound and the 「い」 vowel sound. Simple, right? Well, the best way to envision this while learning it, is to picture a BIG smile on a man’s face.

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ふ

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「ふ」 is the eighth of the ten hiragana we will learn today, and by far the trickiest of the ten. 「ふ」 can be pronounced in two different and yet very similar ways. Either it can be “fu” or “hu”. So either the “f” sound and the 「う」 vowel, or the “h” sound and the 「う」 vowel. However, most times, it is pronounced “fu” in hiragana, so we will go with that. Two ways to envision this kana, is to picture either a hula dancer in the kana, or my favorite way, which is to picture Mount Fuji. *Side Note: Pronounce “FU” without your teeth and lips touching.

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へ

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「へ」 is the ninth of the ten hiragana we will learn today. 「へ」 is pronounced like the “hea” part of the word “heaven”. The best way to remember this kana is to think, “There is an arrow pointing to heaven… which must be on the top of Mount Fuji!” Why did I bring up Mount Fuji again? Because it too, looks like the top of a mountain.

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ほ

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「ほ」 is the tenth and final hiragana we will learn today. 「ほ」 is pronounced like “ho”, like how Santa says, “Ho, ho, ho!”. The best way to picture this kana in your mind is to imagine a hockey player holding his hockey stick with both hands, ready to play the game! (Note: This one looks similar to 「は」. Notice that 「ほ」 has two strokes, which is why the hockey player is holding his hockey stick with both hands.)

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Homework

Whew! That was a lot to take in I’m sure. However, you’ve been steadily getting better at your hiragana columns, so I wanted to make sure to keep your mind somewhat challenged. Trust me, it helps you to learn more if you keep challenging yourself. Which, brings us to the homework! Yes, you will have to do twice the amount of homework now, because there are twice the number of hiragana to contend with. Don’t worry though, you’ll do just fine!

1. First, I want you to visit this website to do some Drag n’ Drop Hiragana. Focus only on the 30 kana you know, which are now the N-Column, H-Column, T-Column, S-Column, K-Column kana, and the vowels. 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 six rows on the right.) If you do want to time yourself before doing the second piece of homework, then aim for all thirty hiragana within 75 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 haven’t already), and practice writing (or typing) in the corresponding romaji for the kana shown. This time, it will be kana from all six of the columns you have learned so far, so it should be a little more difficult, and twice as much fun!

3. For your third piece of homework, I want you to go to RealKana. What you will do is check off the first six columns (the one’s we’ve covered so far), and uncheck all of the columns in the katakana tab. (Trust me, you don’t know these yet.) Now, I want you to click on the “options” tab, and choose all of the typefaces they have available. You may be asking “why” in your mind, and so I will tell you why. Just like in English (and virtually any other language in the world), there are differences in the way that things are written out, and it’s good to be able to notice those differences, and not have them confuse you. (Think of Handwriting versus Typed out things here.) You’ll start to notice these differences with the help of RealKana. After using this resource for roughly 5-10 minutes, you can move on to the final piece of homework.

4. 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. Simply download this pdf and print it out, if you haven’t already. Only practice sheet numbers one through six.

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And there you have it! A huge lesson to be sure, but it’ll be a lot of fun to start putting all of this hiragana knowledge to good use one day soon. Are you still able to follow along well? Are my lessons helping you learn Hiragana? Let me know in the comments below! I look forward to seeing you all next week for the next lesson. We’re nearing the end of this series.

がんばって！
Jessica