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Great job learning the 46 hiragana characters! In this lesson, we cover modified syllables and extended consonant syllables.
What?! There’s more?! Don’t worry, you will find this lesson a breeze. Why? Because you already know all these characters from Lesson 1-2!
Even if “modified syllables” and “extended consonant syllables” sound academic, they are just different ways of combining consonants and extending the usage of existing characters.
By adding two dots or a circle to the top right hand side of certain characters, you can change how they sound:
The two dots and circle are known as diacritics. Japanese has two diacritics and they are the same for hiragana and katakana.
You can refer to 0:00-1:55 of this video for an explanation.
To listen to the pronunciation of these characters, just scroll down to the second half of the hiragana chart on JapaneseUp, and hover your mouse over the characters.
By placing a small や, ゆ or よ next to certain hiragana characters, you can also form new sounds:
This combination works the same way for katakana. You can refer to 3:35-4:47 of this video for an explanation.
To listen to the pronunciation of these characters, just scroll down to the second half of the hiragana chart on JapaneseUp, and hover your mouse over the characters.
Please learn the characters ‘ga’ to ‘go’.
Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the hiragana characters.
Please learn the characters ‘za’ to ‘zo’.
Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the hiragana characters.
Please learn the characters ‘da’ to ‘do’.
Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the hiragana characters.
Please learn the characters ‘ba’ to ‘bo’ and ‘pa’ to ‘po’.
Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the hiragana characters.
Please learn the characters ‘kya’ to ‘kyo’ and ‘gya’ to ‘gyo’.
Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the hiragana characters.
Please learn the characters ‘sha’ to ‘sho’ and ‘ja’ to ‘jo’.
Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the hiragana characters.
Please learn the characters ‘rya’ to ‘ryo’.
Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the hiragana characters.
Please learn the characters ‘mya’ to ‘myo’.
Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the hiragana characters.
Please learn the characters ‘hya’ to ‘hyo’, ‘bya’ to ‘byo’ and ‘pya’ to ‘pyo’.
Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the hiragana characters.
Please learn the characters ‘nya’ to ‘nyo’.
Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the hiragana characters.
Please learn the characters ‘cha’ to ‘cho’.
Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the hiragana characters.
Are you sure you’ve memorized all the hiragana characters correctly?
Play this hiragana review game to test your memoryPlease note that this is a timed game with no option to pause.