Lesson 1: あ い う え お

Reading

How to Read

You basically read as written in ローマ字 [ rōmaji | Roman alphabet ]. But the way you usually read may be different from the sound of Japanese.

Try to imitate the pronunciation of native speakers.

Marks

Mark	Name	Function
、	読点　tōten	same as English comma
。	句点　kuten	same as English period
「	かぎ括弧　kagikakko	same as English quotation mark (beginning)
」	かぎ括弧　kagikakko	same as English quotation mark (end)
？	疑問符　gimonfu	same as English question mark
！	感嘆符　kantanfu	same as English exclamation mark

You can assume that these marks have almost the same functions as English marks.

You don't have to read out these marks.

[ 、] and [ 。] as a group are called 句読点 [ kutōten | punctuation marks ].

Quotation marks [「 ] (beginning) and [ 」] (end) have different shapes.

Vowels

Short Vowels

Long Vowels

Japanese language has five short vowels [短母音 tan-boin ] and five long vowels [長母音 chō-boin ].

あ, い, う, え and お are the five short vowels.

Long vowels ああ, いい, うう, ええ and おお are indicated by an additional short vowel letter.

A horizontal bar is also used (e.g. あー, いー, うー, えー, おー). This is not the official way but is used quite often in casual expressions.

In Rōmaji, long vowels ああ [ ā ], うう [ ū ], ええ [ ē ] and おお [ ō ] are indicated by a horizontal bar on top. いい [ ii ] is double " i ".

Quiz

How to Do

1. Hiragana will be shown.
2. Read out the letter when it becomes red color.
3. You are good enough if you can read correctly the last 10 questions.

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References

Related Topics

Hiragana

Hiragana Chart

YouTube

japanese-lesson.com official channel

Play List - all videos of Lesson 1