Lesson 1 · Hiragana

あ い う え お

The five vowels. One character per screen, and by the end you read your first Japanese words.

Japanese is not written with an alphabet but a syllabary: each character is a whole syllable. Almost every syllable is a consonant plus one of these five vowels — so these five are half of every character you will ever learn.

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あ — a

  • あ

    a

    There is a capital A hiding inside it.

     Tofugu’s mnemonic illustration for あ

“ah”, like the realisation — also the a in car. Short and flat: Japanese vowels do not drift the way English ones do.

い — i

  • い

    i

    Two eels, side by side.

     Tofugu’s mnemonic illustration for い

“ee”, as in eel.

Your first word

あい — love. Two characters, and you have both.

う — u

  • う

    u

    There is a U shape right in it.

     Tofugu’s mnemonic illustration for う

“oo”, as in ooh… ahhh — the u in UNO.

え — e

  • え

    e

    An exotic bird with a feather on its head.

     Tofugu’s mnemonic illustration for え

“eh”, as in egg.

Two more words

いえ — house. うえ — above, on top of.

お — o

  • お

    o

    Two letter o’s in there. あ has a capital A instead — that is the tell.

     Tofugu’s mnemonic illustration for お

“oh”, also the o in origami. Watch it against あ: お has two o’s, あ has an A. Tofugu notes this is where most people trip up.

あ or お

The pair that trips up nearly everyone, on its own. Look for the dot.

All five together

Pair them up.

Read them cold

No options, nothing to eliminate. Type what you see.

Words

Five of them, all readable with five characters.

Spell every word

Worth knowing

This order — あいうえお — is Japanese alphabetical order. Dictionaries use it, menus use it, and every kana chart you will ever see is laid out along it.

It is also the axis the grammar turns on. Verb endings walk along this row: 書かない, 書きます, 書く, 書けば — same consonant, vowel sliding down あ→い→う→え. So these five are not five characters. They are the spine.

あお is the colour blue; あおい is the adjective. That trailing い is doing grammatical work — a whole class of Japanese adjectives ends in it.