Lesson #3: More Hiragana and Katakana

Back to Language Lessons
Back to Index

This page was created on 5 June, 2007.

Make Sure to Review Hiragana and Katakana!

Before we can move on to grammar, we need to take a closer look at Japanese writing. In addition to the 46 basic hiragana syllables we learned in Lesson 2, there are additional syllables that can be built from adding marks or combining certain characters. Since these syllables build upon the basic hiragana syllables, it's important that you have memorized the basic syllables before starting this lesson.

Review your hiragana with this catchy Hiragana Techno Song!

Click for a similar Katakana Song!

Diacritical Marks in both Hiragana and Katakana

Carefully observe the text written on the following page of manga (Japanese comic book), taken from the first volume of the popular manga, "Marmelade Boy." Is there anything different about the katakana writing at the top of the page?

There seem to be two dash-like markings at the upper-right side of the first katakana character. This pair of short diagonal strokes makes the unvoiced consonants k, s, t, and h become voiced consonants.Additionally, the consonant h changes to p when a small circle is added to the upper right corner of the character. These changes are reflected in the diagram below. These two types of markings are called Diacritrical Marks.

Hiragana

Practice repeatedly saying the unvoiced consonant and then following it with the corresponding voiced consonant, like "k, g." Notice the differences in the way your mouth shape changes to make the voiced and unvoiced consonants.

Katakana

Katakana uses the same diacritical marks as hiragana does and has the same pronunciations.

Contracted Sounds

In addition to diacritical marks, both hiragana and katakana create contracted sounds by combining syllables. These contracted sounds represent a single syllable. The characters や, ゆ, and よ are written at the bottom right after the basic i-vowel hiragana to create additional contracted syllables. All of the combinations are presented below.

Katakana is similar, as shown below.

Katakana also include a ー character to indicate long vowels.

Example: カー is pronounced kaa and means "car."

Double Consonants

In order to write double consonants, a small letter つ is used.

Example: さっか is pronounced sakka and means "writer."

The exception to this rule is when the double consonant is used for the "n" sound. These are written by using ん+a hiragana that starts with an "n" sound.

Example: こんにちは which is pronounced konnichiwa and means "good day."

Pronunciation Practice

Now that you know all the hiragana and katakana characters, you can go back and read the Vocabularly List from Lesson 2 in Japanese!

Please watch the video below and listen carefully to the speaker's pronunciation. Try to copy her pronunciation as closely as possible.

Vocabulary

The Vocabulary List for this lesson is the same as that of Lesson 2. As there is no new vocabulary list, please focus on pronouncing these Japanese expressions correctly.

Assignment
Please record a clip of your voice reading the vocabulary list from Lesson 2. E-mail this clip as an attachment to your instructor at: eunnah@stanford.edu in order to receive personal feedback on your pronunciation.

Back to Language Lessons

Tokoro created and updated by Eunice Lee