Japanese

Notes
Except for 「し」、「ち」、「つ」、and 「ん」、you can get a sense of how each l
etter is pronounced by matching the consonant on the top row to the vow
el. For example, 「き」 would become / ki / and 「ゆ」 would become / yu
/ and so on.
Go to this web site to hear the pronunciations of each hiragana charact
er. The relevant sections are from 2.1 to 2.11.
As you can see, not all sounds match the way our consonant system work
s. As written in the table, 「ち」 is pronounced "chi" and 「つ」 is pron
ounced "tsu".
The / r / or / l / sound in Japanese is quite different from any sound
in English. It involves more of a roll and a clip by hitting the roof o
f your mouth with your tongue. Pay careful attention to that whole colu
mn.
Pay careful attention to the difference between / tsu / and / su /.
The 「ん」 character is a special character because it is rarely used by
itself and does not have a vowel sound. It is attached to another chara
cter to add a / n / sound. For example, 「かん」 becomes 'kan' instead of
'ka', 「まん」 becomes 'man' instead of 'ma', and so on and so forth.
You must learn the correct stroke order and and direction!

Once you memorize all the characters in the hiragana alphabet you're done learning the alphabet
but not all the sounds. There are five more possible consonant sounds that are possible by either
affixing two tiny lines similar to a double quotation mark called dakuten （濁点） or a tiny circle
called handakuten （半濁点）. This essentially creates a "muddy" or less clipped versi
on of the consonant (technically called a voiced consonant or 「濁り」, which liter
ally means to become muddy).

All the possible combinations of muddied consonant sounds are given in

the table below.

Notice that 「ぢ」 sounds essentially identical to 「じ」 and both are pronou
nced as / ji /, while 「づ」 is pronounced like / dzu /.

The Small 「や」、「ゆ」、and 「よ」

You can also combine a consonant with a / ya / yu / yo / sound by attac
hing a small 「や」、「ゆ」、or 「よ」 to the / i / vowel character of each
consonant.

All possible small や、ゆ、and よ combinations

p b j g r m h n c s k
ぴゃ びゃ じゃ ぎゃ りゃ みゃ ひゃ にゃ ちゃ しゃ きゃ ya
ぴゅ びゅ じゅ ぎゅ りゅ みゅ ひゅ にゅ ちゅ しゅ きゅ yu
ぴょ びょ じょ ぎょ りょ みょ ひょ にょ ちょ しょ きょ yo

Notes
The above table is the same as before. Match the top consonants to the
vowel sound on the right. Ex: きゃ = kya.
Go to this web site again to hear the pronunciations of these new sound
s. The author has decided to include 「ぢゃ」、「ぢゅ」、and 「ぢょ」 but th
ese combinations are actually never used in favor of 「じゃ」、「じゅ」、an
d 「じょ」.
Also note that since 「じ」 is pronounced / ji /, all the small 「や」、
「ゆ」、「よ」 sounds are also based off of that, namely; / jya / jyu / jy
o /.
The same thing also applies to 「ち」 which becomes / cha / chu / cho /
and 「し」 which becomes / sha / shu / sho /. (Though arguably, you can
still think of it as / sya / syu / syo /.)