roman twenty-six letter alphabets, Hiragana isa syllabary, which means that each letter represents a whole syllable or sound. The only letters that are identical to the Roman alphabet are the vowels(A, I, U, E, O) and the letter N. Those can be pronounced and written on their own. All the other charactersrepresent soundsof two or more letters. Thiswill become much clearer when you take a look at the full set of forty-seven hiragana.

Most characters will have little \u201c hane\u201d at the end of their strokes. Since
originally the Japanese wrote their characters with a pencil and ink, they
represent the ink marks that you would leave at the end of each stroke.
We have adopted them into hiragana to make them easily recognizable

character softer. Hence, the character Ka with ten-ten becomesGa, and the character Su with ten-ten will become Zu. Ten-ten cannot be applied to all characters, but you will be able to see that in the actual hiragana chartsbelow. Alternatively, there is the maru, or circle, that we can put there instead. A maru will harden the sound of the consonant, so Ha with maru becomesPa. Maru can only be applied to the H-seriesof the

with another hiragana to make a new sound. In order to make sounds like Sha, Shu and Sho, we can\u2019t simply insert an \u201c h\u201d like we would do in English. Instead, we add a half-sized version of Ya, Yu or Yo next to the syllable

to a consonant syllable, remember that it extendsthe syllable and alters the pronunciation. One rule when writing a modified syllable, is that you always use the \u201c i\u201d version of the syllable. This means that we use Ki to

make kya, kyu, and kyo, and Mi to make mya, myu, and myo. You cannot use Ka and Ya to make Kya, you can only use a syllable that endswith an \u201c i\u201d .

sound of the \u201c t\u201d longer than you normally would. The exception with this is when you double an \u201cN\u201d, because we have a character for \u201cn\u201d. So when you want a double N, just write a hiragana \u201c N\u201d before the syllable that

startswith an \u201cN\u201d. For example \u201ckon\u2019nichi wa\u201d should be written as\u201cko-n- ni-chi-wa\u201d. For vowels we simply extend the hiragana with one of the five vowels. Henc e, if we want to write gyuunyuu (milk), we write it:\u304e\u3085\u3046\u306b\u3085

word or phrase is, you either extend an \u201co\u201d sound with another \u201co\u201d or with a \u201c u\u201d, yet the prununciation remainsthe same. For example, \u201c\u3053\u3046\u3053\u3046\u201d is written as\u201ckoukou\u201d but pronounced as\u201ckookoo\u201d. In thissame way, an \u201ce\u201d can be extended wth another \u201ce\u201d or with an \u201ci\u201d. The word for

confusing to first-time Japanese students, and it\u2019s something you will learn through making mistakes. For instance, we write \u201cdewa\u201d a very common word used in conversations, as\u3067\u306f. \u201c\u306f\u201d In thiscase isHa, but is

pronounced as\u201cwa\u201d. Hence, writing\u3067\u308f, where the second hiragana is Wa, would make your word incorrect and can make the sentence mean something else. However, thisonly appliesto particles, the verb \u201cto be\u201d and some idiomatic expressions. If we want to say \u201cwatashi\u201d, the most common personal pronoun, we write \u201c\u308f\u305f\u3057\u201d and not \u201c\u306f\u305f\u3057\u201d. Likewise when wordsstart with \u201cha\u201d, don\u2019t pronounce them as\u201cwa\u201d. Thistakes some time to get used to, but with practice you will get used to it.