Let's learn Kana!

So, the basics of the basics coming right up!

As we all know, Japanese is constructed from 3 different letter forms.

Hiragana - ひらがな

Katakana - カタカナ

Kanji

Hiragana is used for normal everyday Japanese words.

Katakana is used for forgein words such as names, countries and also borrowed words. You will come across many of them in places like starbucks.

Kanji is used a lot, and personally - is a pain in the backside! It seems daunting, I am not going to lie, it is difficult. Mostly because I learned a lot of Japanese before touching Kanji, whereas it is meant to be taught at the same time.

So, to drill in the Kana I decided to write up the charts! I do recommend making one of these yourself to get used to how to write it and recognising it. Draw it up, pencil it, ink it. That way you are re-writing it more than once and it might stick a little better.

Hiragana

 

I do apologise about the paper and the markings. The paper apparently hated the pencil I used.

 

Katakana

 

 

 

You will find that a lot of "Borrowed words" have a lot more characters than needed - this is because they need to make it sound like it would in English but their characters aren't like ours. So for example: Spain. they don't have "Sp" it would be スペイン "Supein" so take this into consideration when you are translating.

 

That is Kana! When I am posting my work with Kanji, I will be typing up the Kanji that the lesson is focusing on so you can see it properly. Do not worry about that.

 

Have fun!