46 hiragana chart – learn to write Japanese hiragana

A chart of 46 different Hiragana

Here is a chart of 46 Hiragana symbols.

Hiragana is ‘Phonetic Alphabetic’ which means a Hiragana character is a sound character, and these Hiragana characters are separated into 46 differnet sounds.

The chart start with a, i, u, e, o (vowel sounds) and ends with wa, Wo, nn.

What is Hiragana?

Hiragana is more rounded/easy to use script, and indicates both the shapes and the relative simplicity of the script.

Each symbol was developed from simplified kanji with the same pronunciation.

For example, the hiragana symbol,Ka is a simplified version of the kanji, (pronouced ka).

The left side remains very similar in the hiragana symbol, the right side “box” has been reduced to a slanting line.

When to use hiragana?

Hiragana symbols are often used to write the grammatical parts of words and sentence espeically when Kanji is not appropriate for writing.

For example, when writing verbs, kanji is used to express the main idea or meaning and hiragana is used to indicate the function of the verb.

The meaning of this sentence is ‘Very Hard’ and written by using both Kanji and Hiragana script. The first 3 characters are Hiragana, the 4th character is Kanji and the last 2 characters are Hiragana.

Japanese child learn Hiragana

Unlike Kanji, Hiragana was developed by Japanese people, and today, all the Japanese Children learn Hiragana to write first and then step up to Kanji characters as they grow.

Gradually, they will replace words and parts of words with kanji as they progress.

Hiragana is also used to indicate how to pronounce a kanji when it is first learned or if it is unusual.

When used in this way, it is called Furigana and is written beside or above the kanji as shown above.

How to write Sushi in Hiragana?

So, let’s practice writing a word with Hiragana Script.

It is very easy to write a word or name with Hiragana scripts once you understand the avobe 46 different Hiragana symbols.

So, let’s practice writing ‘Sushi” with Hiragana script. To write ‘Sushi’, first, we need to figure out a sound character that match to one of the 46 hiragana symbol from the above chart.

There are 2 sounds that makes the word, ‘Sushi’, Su and Shi.

So, how about writing ‘Sa Yo Na Ra'(Good bye) with Hiragana Script?

TENGU Japanese hiragana online lessons

You can also watch TENGU Japanese hiragana online lessons to learn Hiragana.