Katakana chart with sound

How to learn hiragana in about three days

Learn it as five sounds, then a grid

Every kana is a consonant plus one of five vowels: a, i, u, e, o. Once you have the vowel row, か ki ku ke ko is a pattern, not five new symbols. The grid is the lesson — do not learn kana as a random list.

Say each one out loud as you read it

Kana map to sounds almost perfectly, which is the good news about Japanese. Click the audio, repeat it, and you are training reading and pronunciation at the same time.

Do one row at a time, five minutes each

Ten rows, five minutes a row, two or three sessions a day. Most people can read all of hiragana within three days and are merely slow, not stuck, after a week.

Read something real immediately

The moment you can stumble through the chart, start reading words. Amiko shows furigana above every Japanese line, so any conversation doubles as kana practice.

The characters everyone mixes up

ぬ / め

ぬ nu has a loop at the end; め me does not. Look for the tail.

れ / ね / わ

Same left stroke. れ re ends with a flick out, ね ne with a loop, わ wa with a closed curve.

は / ほ

ほ ho has one extra horizontal bar. That is the whole difference.

シ / ツ

Katakana シ shi has strokes coming from the left; ツ tsu has them from the top. Think of shi lying down.

ソ / ン

ン n starts with a short stroke going down-right; ソ so goes down-left. Compare the angle of the first stroke.

さ / ち

Mirror images. さ sa opens to the left, ち chi opens to the right.