JLPT N5 - Lesson 3 - Hiragana Part 1

Hiragana Keyboard

The first step of your Japanese learning journey is to learn the Hiragana and Katakana characters. The Japanese writing system has 3 components which are

• Hiragana - 46 basic characters to write the native words.
• Katakana - 46 Katakana characters for writing foreign words.
• Kanji - Kanji are actually Chinese characters used in modern Japanese writing system used as stem of a word convey meaning of the word as well as sound.

Please note that all these are characters and not alphabets. In this lesson I will introduce Hiragana and in next two lessons I will introduce Katakana and Kanji. Once you master Hiragana, Katakana will become easier to learn.

Hiragana - Each Hiragana character represents a particular syllable. First five hiragana characters 'a' 'i' 'u' 'e' 'o' represents vowel sound and only one character n represents consonant sound, remaining all characters represents a consonant-vowel sound. Here is the basic Hiragana chart:

Basic Hiragana Chart

Now let us make some simple words with Hiragana characters.

Making words with Hiragana

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Lesson 2......Lesson 4

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• Lesson 1: Why Japanese Language
• Lesson 2: JLPT N5 Introduction
• Lesson 3: Hiragana Part 1
• Lesson 4: Hiragana Part 2
• Lesson 5: Katakana Part 1
• Lesson 6: Katakana Part 2
• Lesson 7: Kanji Part 1
• Lesson 8: Japanese Everyday Greetings
• Lesson 9: Japanese Particles Introduction
• Lesson 10: Grammar Time
• Lesson 11: Verb Basic
• Lesson 12: Vocabulary - Words refer to family members