The table below represents the entire Hiragana syllabary categorized by the consonant and vowel sounds.

With the exception of a few sounds (as shown by the pronunciation in parentheses), most sounds in
Japanese are easily represented by a vowel or consonant-vowel. There is also one consonant-only sound:
.
Hiragana - Click for stroke order and sound

n w r y m h n t s k

a
(n)

i
(chi) (shi)

u
(fu) (tsu)
e

o
(o)

To understand how this chart works, let's start by looking at the right-most column, which are all the vowel-
only sounds.

o
Here are some sample words for reading practice.
Example: - love (read as "ai")
1. - to meet
2. - house
3. - nephew
4. - above
5. - to say
Each additional column represents a consonant sound with each of the five vowel sounds. For example,
the "k" column has the following sounds.
 ka

ki

ku

ke

ko
is the only character with no vowel sound. It adds an "n" sound as shown in the examples below.
- gold (read as "kin")
- woman; girl (read as "on-na")
- music (read as "on-ga-ku")
Here are my recommendations for learning how to read, write, hear, and say the characters and sounds in
Hiragana.
Reading: You'll be getting plenty of reading practice with the material in this book.
Writing: You'll need to develop muscle memory so use regular pen and paper. Below are handy PDFs for
Hiragana writing practice.
Hiragana trace sheets
japanese-lesson.com
Hiroshi & Sakura
Hearing: You can listen to the pronunciation for each character by clicking on it in the first chart. If your
browser doesn't support audio, you can also download them
at http://www.guidetojapanese.org/audio/basic_sounds.zip. There are also other free resources with audio
samples.
Speaking: Practice repeating the sounds. I recommend recording yourself to get an accurate idea of what
you sound like. Pay careful attention to the "r" sounds!
While most of the sounds are pretty straightforward, the "r" sounds deserve careful attention for English
speakers because there is no equivalent sound in English. It is more similar to the "r" sound in Spanish.
What works for some English speakers (even if it may not be technically correct) is to shape
the lips something like the sound that is made for the English "r," but to make the sound with a
single trill or flap of the tongue against the front of the palate.