Learn to read Japanese
A short, active path into reading Japanese: decode seven real words from eleven kana, learn why the verb comes last and how nine particles carry the grammar, meet the plain past stories are told in, and read a short fable before opening your first book.
The script
4 sectionsRead seven real words from eleven characters
- Each hiragana character is a whole syllable, not a letter — “nu” is one character, not two.
- The vowels hold steady, so a character sounds the same nearly everywhere.
- The table holds only the eleven characters these seven words need.
- Two small strokes voice a consonant: su → zu. And つ is “tsu”, never “tu”.
- Try each word once, reveal it, say it. All seven come back in the closing stories.
Japanese writes with three sets of characters at once; this section uses a slice of the first, hiragana — the round, loopy one. A hiragana character is not a letter: each one is a whole syllable. ぬnu is the whole sound “nu”, no separate “n” to add. The five vowels: a as in “father”, i as in “machine”, u as in “flute”, e as in “bed”, o as in “or”.
Only the characters these seven words need
| Character |
|---|
| いi |
| ぬnu |
| ねne |
| こko |
| みmi |
| すsu |
| とto |
| りri |
| もmo |
| きki |
| つtsu |
つtsu is the ts of “cats”, at the front of a syllable. The full forty-six are in the kana reference; you do not need them to finish this path.
Two small strokes voice the consonant
Seven words for the closing stories
Use the table and the segmentation hint. Read the characters in order, then reveal and say the whole word.
- いぬ
i + nu
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いぬinu“dog” - ねこ
ne + ko
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ねこneko“cat” - みず
mi + su with the voicing strokes
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みずmizu“water” - とり
to + ri
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とりtori“bird” - もり
mo + ri
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もりmori“forest” - き
one character, one syllable
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きki“tree” - きつね
ki + tsu + ne — remember the middle one
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きつねkitsune“fox”