Hiragana, part 1: the first twenty sounds

Hiragana is the first Japanese script to learn, and the one you will use most: 46 basic symbols, each standing for one syllable. Learn it in two halves, read real words from day one, and it is yours in a couple of weeks.

Hiragana part 1: the vowels and the k, s, t, n rows

The chart is built on five vowels. Every other row is a consonant plus those five vowels, always in the order a, i, u, e, o:

Three sounds break the pattern, and they are in the romaji: し is shi, not si; ち is chi, not ti; つ is tsu, not tu. Japanese has no si, ti or tu sound, so those slots are filled by the nearest thing.

The vowels are short and pure: a as in father, i as in machine, u with the lips flat rather than rounded, e as in pet, o as in pot but with the lips a little rounder. They never drift into diphthongs the way English vowels do.

Read it now

Twenty-five symbols are already enough to read real words from this course:

Some words are normally written in kanji, with the hiragana as their reading. The site prints that reading above the kanji, so you can read these too:

Romaji: what it is and when to use it

Romaji is Japanese written in Latin letters. This site uses Hepburn, the system on Japanese passports, railway signs and most textbooks, which spells each sound the way an English speaker would guess: し is shi, not si. Most of it is predictable. These are the spots that are not:

Hepburn spells the sound, not the chart row, and writes particles as they are said. Two things the table cannot show:

• The macron only marks a long vowel inside one word. おもう is omou, because the う is a separate verb ending.
• えい is usually said as a long e. Sensei sounds like sensē, but it is written ei.

Romaji also puts spaces between words, which Japanese never does, so the romaji line under an example shows you where one word ends and the next begins.

Typed answers here accept every spelling in that table, macron or not. You never need a Japanese keyboard.

Why the course moves you onto kana anyway. Romaji is a crutch. Lean on it for the first week, then let it go:

• Almost nobody writes Japanese in romaji. Menus, messages, books and almost every page you will read use kana and kanji.
• Everyday romaji loses information. Signs often drop the long vowel, so Tōkyō becomes Tokyo. Length changes words: おばさん (obasan) is an aunt, おばあさん (obāsan) a grandmother.
• It fixes English sounds in your head. Read "re" in romaji and you hear an English r, not the Japanese tap.

So the course shows romaji under each new word, and on example sentences and stories behind a "Show romaji" switch that starts on. Turn it off as soon as the kana reads faster than the letters.