A.

Japanese Alphabets

Hiragana is one of the Japanese writing systems in Japan along with

Katakana and Kanji (Chinese characters). Hiragana is the basic foundation in
learning the Japanese language as it is used to write Japanese words. Most
students learn Hiragana at the very beginning of the study as this is the key to
learning basic Japanese. Hiragana and Kanji are used widely to form a sentence
while Katakana is used mostly for foreign words. Recently, Rōmaji is also used
to describe the sound of the Japanese in the Roman alphabet. It is mainly used
for the convenience of foreigners who are not familiar with Japanese characters.

B. Hiragana Characters

Hiragana has 46 basic letters. Each hiragana character represents a

consonant-vowel sound. In the chart provided on page 1, you can see all of the
basic hiragana characters along with the closest sounding roman letters. It is
read from top to bottom and right to left, which is how most Japanese books are
written. The five vowel sounds, a (ah), i (ee), u (oo), e (eh), o (oh), are combined
with the consonant sounds k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, and w. The “n” is the only
character that does not end in a vowel sound. Also, it is not used at the
beginning of any Japanese words

C. General rules of stroke orders.

Japanese characters were all originally written with a brush, so writing the
strokes of a hiragana character in the right stroke and order is important in
getting the shape of the character correct.

1. Write from top to bottom b. Write from left to right

2. Write first the horizontal before vertical

When horizontal and vertical lines cross, horizontal lines are usually written before vertical
lines.

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3. Write the Character-spanning strokes last

The vertical line that passes through other strokes is written after the strokes passed
through are written.

D. Ways to end a stroke.

When you write any Japanese character, you should always pay attention
to these three things. They explain how to finish drawing each line in a letter.

1. Tome

1. Tome means “stop”. You bring your pen to a

complete stop at the end of a stroke.

2. Hane

2. Hane means “jump”. You end the stroke with

a slight flick.
3.

3. Harai

4. Harai means “sweeping”. This is the broad

sweep at the end of a stroke.

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Exercise 1:
Write inside the box the corresponding Hiragana of the following words.

1. UE (Above, top)

2. AI (Love)

3. AOI (Blue)

4. IE (House, home)

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Exercise 2:
Write inside the box the corresponding Hiragana of the following words.

1. KAO (Face)

2. KI (Tree)

3. KOE (Voice)

4. AKAI (Red)

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Exercise 3:
Write inside the box the corresponding Hiragana of the following words.

1. OISHII (Delicious)

2. ISHI (Stone)

3. KASA (Umbrella)

4. SUKI (Like)

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 Wrting practice

I. Write the Hiragana of the following words inside the boxes.

1.SEKAI- world

2. IKA- squid

3. E- picture, drawing

4. OKASHI- sweets

5. SAKE- wine

6. EKI- train station

Reading practice

II. Read the following hiragana and write the Roman letters in the
parentheses.

1. うそ （ ）lie

2. あさ （ ）morning

3. あせ （ ）sweat

4. こし （ ）waist

5. けさ （ ）this morning

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https://kanjiart.net/column/calligraphy/
https://www.szfki.hu/~akiss/others/hiragana_table.pdf