Learn how to read and write hiragana characters, あ、い、う、え、お
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| 皆さん、ようこそ。(Mina-san, yōkoso.) |
| Hi everybody, my name is Chihiro and welcome to japanesepod101.com’s Kantan kana series, the fastest, easiest and most fun way to learn the two basic Japanese alphabets Hiragana and Katana. Over the next 25 lessons, you will go from zero to complete mastery. Are you ready? Okay let’s begin. |
| In the first half of this series, you will learn Hiragana. Every Hiragana character represents a certain sound but doesn’t have meaning by itself. Using these Hiragana characters, you can write almost any Japanese word. There are 46 Hiragana characters and they are commonly arranged like this. Look complicated? Don’t worry, we will do one rule at a time and before you know it, you will master them all. Okay let’s start writing. |
| The first character you will learn is あ(a) to write it correctly, pay attention to the stroke order. 1, 2, 3, when you are starting out, try to make your characters look as close to mine as possible. Keep your line slightly curved like this. Good, let’s move on. |
| The second character is い(i). い(i) is more simple than あ(a) but there are two things to keep in mind. First watch me try it once. 1, 2, when you drop い(i), imagine there is an vowel that you are chasing around like this. This will help you write the lines correctly. Also don’t forget about this part. This is called はね(hane). this is left from when characters written with the Russian ink. Try to make this はね(hane) with your pen. Believe it or not, now you know how to write a word in Japanese. This is 愛(ai) or love. Let’s learn another character so we can write more words. |
| Here is う(u). Make the top stroke angled like this, not flat. This is いう(iu) which means to speak and here is あう(au) which means to meet. Two more characters for this lesson. 頑張ってください!(Ganbatte kudasai!) え(e) is next. The first stroke of え(e) is the same as う(u) and the rest is all in one stroke. Don’t lift up that pen. |
| This is いえ(ie) which means “house”. And this is うえ(ue) which means “up”. Our last character today is お(o). This first stroke is like あ(a) but this stroke swings around like this and makes a loop. Then make one final stroke here. This is おい(oi), “nephew”, and this is あお(ao), “blue”. |
| Now let’s have a short quiz. I will show you the Hiragana and you read it out loud. Bonus points if you remember what it means. |
| あい(ai), Love |
| いう(iu), to speak |
| あお(ao), blue |
| Now it’s time for Chihiro’s tip. Have you been writing as you watch? I hope so because there is no better way to master the kana quickly and to write them for yourself. |
| Do you know how to write かこ(kako), ”past”. You will learn that and much more in the next lesson. See you then. |
416 Comments
Hideみなさん、こんにちは！
If you can't read (or can only partially read) the text above, then this brand new video series is for you! :D Learn how to read and write Japanese from scratch with our Kantan Kana video series featuring Chihiro-sensei. It is also great for those who have learned hiragana and katakana but would like a review - or for those who want to perfect the art of writing them.
Please let us know what you think!! :hachimaki:
Christian Johnsonさん
Thank you so much for your comment😄
すごい！
Keep up the great work😇
Please let us know if you have any questions :)
Sincerely
りょうま（Ryoma）
Team JapanesePod101.com
I know all of them 😄 so I am reviewing it
ジェイソンさん,
こんにちは。コメントありがとうございます！素敵なBGMですよね。残念ながら、ビデオの中で使われている音楽はオリジナルの曲なので曲名はなく、音楽をダウンロードすることもできません。でも、レッスンだけでなく音楽も楽しんでもらえて良かったです。😄
Looking forward to seeing you often here.
Cheers,
Yoshimi
Team JapanesePod101.com
懐かしいシリーズですね。BGMが大好きです。曲の名前を知っていますか。どこにでもダウンロードできますか。もしそうなら、教えてください。読んでくれてありがとうございます。
maxさん
Thank you so much for your comment😄
You can slow down the video by changing its speed👍
Also, it's totally fine to pause it while you take notes😇
Please let us know if you have any questions :)
Sincerely
りょうま（Ryoma）
Team JapanesePod101.com
way to fast for me
Hi Mari,
Thank you for your comment!
It's good to hear that this lesson is helpful for you😊
We also appreciate your feedback.
Hope you enjoy learning Japanese with us:)
Sincerely,
Miho
Team JapanesePod101.com
Hi Joseph Somthaboun,
Thank you for posting😄
As you might have noticed, this lesson focuses on learning the first 5 hiragana characters, あ,い,う,え,お, and if you watch the video, it explains how to read and write those 5 characters. As you continue taking the following lessons, you will learn the rest of the characters in the same way.
In the lesson transcript, other than the teacher’s name Chihiro, where hiragana character is written, it also shows how to pronounce it besides the character, like あ(a). If you want to know how to write Chihiro in Hiragana, it’s ちひろ. and you will learn those characters in future lessons.
Let us know if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Yoshimi
Team JapanesePod101.com
This is continuously an incredible lesson I've encountered. Since I've write down the first hiragana character meaning as Chihiro pronounce the sound of the first character. Likewise, it seems that Japanese pronunciation wasn't written in a word so I can write it next to the first character in this lesson. Same thing I've already wrote all of the 46 hiragana characters down but unfortunately unable to identify which character is which as mentioned before the pronunciation for each of the characters. Hope my concerns make a lot of sense.
Best Regards,
Joseph Somthaboun
Michaelさん
Thank you so much for your comment😄
Yes, we have this series😉
https://www.japanesepod101.com/lesson-library/learn-hiragana-with-worksheets/
Please let us know if you have any questions :)
Sincerely
りょうま（Ryoma）
Team JapanesePod101.com