Interested in learning Japanese but not sure where to start? An effective way of beginning, in my opinion, is to start from the roots, the fundamentals if you will. In any language, that would be the alphabets. In Japanese, the equivalent of the English alphabets would be Hiragana.
One of the three types of 'alphabets' present in Japanese, hiragana is the basic building blocks for forming words and sentences.
Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about. – Benjamin Lee Whorf
The Start of Your Journey
First and foremost, congratulations on wanting to learn a new language! It'll be a challenge, but a challenge worth completing.
Step one in conquering written Japanese is by learning Hiragana, also known as the alphabets. The table above shows the main letters of hiragana. You can use that to practice memorizing the shapes and sounds of the letters.
Pronunciation
So the first thing you have to do is to memorize the 5 vowels in hiragana: a, i, u, e, and o. This will save you a lot of time in learning the other letters, trust me. If you look at the table above, the first column on the right shows the 5 vowels that I've mentioned earlier. Now, looking at the columns after that, you'll notice that they all follow the same vowel pattern. The only difference is that there is a consonant placed before each vowel, producing different sounds. Easy enough right?
The next step is to be able to pronounce them correctly. This might take a bit of getting used to because the letters correspond to unique sounds instead of, well, letters. The letter 'a' is pronounced like the A in architecture. 'i' is pronounced similar to the sound that 'ee' makes. Make sure you drill the pronunciations into your head! The video below helps show you how to pronounce the letters correctly.
At this point, you might be wondering, "But there are letters that don't follow the pattern so what is this guy on about?" Well you've wondered right! Even if you didn't, well, at least now you know. There are a few exceptions, namely shi, chi, tsu, and fu. To be fair, they do sound similar to the consonant in the column.
Writing
Now we move on to writing! fun! In Japanese, they have a specific way of writing the letters, demonstrated by the GIF below. This is called the stroke order. You're probably thinking that this is tedious and unnecessary. Well to put it simply, it's important and necessary BUT don't worry, it eventually comes naturally to you; just keep practicing. I got it down in around a few weeks to a month or so.
Fun fact: The general rule of stroke order in Hiragana is that each letter is written from top to bottom, left to right. Another rule is that if vertical and horizontal lines intersect, the horizontal lines are usually written first.
There are also practice sheets which can be printed to help you write the letters correctly. It tells you the correct stroke order for all the letters. You can visit the PDF file here:
Variations
If you've watched the video above or simply read the title, you would have noticed that there were WAAAYYY more letters than what was in the table. In addition to the original 48 letters, there are also variations for some of the letters. This is because there are tiny symbols in the shape of a quotation mark/degree Celsius symbol added into the letters, changing the initial consonant in the letter. The table below illustrates which letters are able to do this as well as their pronunciation.
The stroke order is similar to the original, with an addition of the " and ° symbols.
And that's it! You've completed your first step in learning Japanese! Make sure you practice associating the words to their sounds as well as practicing how to write hiragana. It'll help you a lot in the long run as well.
My next post will be addressing the next set of letters, known as Katakana. They're usually used for words that are borrowed from a different language. See you in the next post!
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