MINA-SAN YOUKOSO!
Hi everybody, my name is Chihiro and welcome to JapanesePod101.com's Kantan Kana series.
The fastest easiest and most fun way to learn the two basic Japanese alphabets,
Hiragana and Katakana.
Over the next twenty five lessons, you'll go from zero to complete mastery.
Are you ready?
OK, let's begin!
In the first half of this series, you will learn Hiragana.
Every Hiragana character represents certain sounds, but doesn't have meaning by themselves.
Using these Hiragana characters, you can write almost any Japanese word.
There are 46 Hiragana characters, and they are commonly arranged like this.
Look complicated?
Don't worry. We'll do one row at a time, and before you know it you'll master them all.
OK,
let's start writing!
The first character you will learn is: A.
To write it correctly, pay attention to the stroke order. 1…2…3.
When you're starting out try to make your characters look as close to mine as possible.
Keep your lines slightly curved like this.
Good! Let's move on.
The second character is: I.
I is more simple than A
but there are two things to keep in mind.
First, watch me draw it once.
1…2.
When you draw I, imagine there is an oval that you're tracing around like this.
This will help you write the lines correctly.
Also, don't forget about this part.
This is called a HANE.
This is left from when characters were written with a brush and ink.
Try to make this HANE with your pen.
Believe it or not, now you know how to write a word in Japanese.
This is AI, or "love"
Let's learn another character so we can write more words.
Here is "U".
Make the top stroke angled like this, not flat.
This is IU, which means "to speak"
And here is AU, which means "to meet"
Two more characters for this lesson, GANBATTE KUDASAI.
E is next.
The first stroke of E is the same as U, and the rest is all in one stroke.
Don't lift up that pen!
This is IE which means "house".
And this is UE which means "up".
Our last character today is O.
This first stroke is like A
But this stroke swings around like this and makes a loop.
Then make one final stroke here.
This is OI, "nephew"
And this is AO, "blue"
Now let's have a short quiz.
I'll show you the Hiragana
and you read it out loud
Bonus points if you remember what it means
Now it's time for Chihiro's tip:
Have you been writing as you watch?
I hope so
Because there's no better way to master the kana quickly
then to write them for yourself
Do you know how to write KAKO, "past"?
You'll learn how to write that and much more in the next lesson. See you then�
