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.
Three sets of characters, and why the mix helps you
- A page mixes hiragana, katakana and kanji, and the mix is what shows you where words begin.
- Kanji carry meaning rather than sound: read the meaning and let the reader print the sound.
- Spiky katakana marks borrowed words and names, including the three names in the closing stories.
- Japanese writes 、 for a comma, 。 for a full stop, and 「 」 around speech.
- Words you just decoded in hiragana are usually printed as kanji: いぬinu is normally 犬.
Real Japanese has no spaces between words. That works because the three sets of characters do the job spaces do in English: kanji — characters borrowed from Chinese, each carrying a whole meaning — mark the content words, and round hiragana marks the grammar around them, so the shapes themselves show where one word ends and the next begins.
Nine kanji, meaning first
| Kanji | Where you will meet it |
|---|---|
| 犬inu“dog” | the word you decoded as いぬ |
| 猫neko“cat” | your ねこ |
| 木ki“tree” | a trunk with branches and roots — a picture |
| 水mizu“water” | your みず |
| 日hi“day; sun” | ある日aru hi“one day” — how a fable scene opens |
| 大“big” | in 大きいōkii |
| 小“small” | in 小さいchiisai |
| 上ue“above; top” | in 木の上ki no ue, “the top of the tree” |
| 中naka“middle; inside” | in もりの中mori no naka, “the inside of the forest” |
Do not learn a kanji’s readings — each character has several, they change from word to word, and chasing them is a common reason people quit. Learn the meaning, read the sound the app prints above the word, and keep going. More kanji are in the katakana and kanji reference.
Katakana: three names you will meet at the end of this path
| Katakana | Sound | Who |
|---|---|---|
| ミナ | mi-na | a mouse |
| ダラ | da-ra | an old fox |
| ティカ | ti-ka | a small yellow bird |
Katakana is the third set: the same sounds as hiragana in angular, spiky shapes, used for borrowed words and names. ティ is テte with a shrunken ィ after it — a modern combination invented for “ti”, a sound no native Japanese word has. Foreign names bend the rules like that; sound them out and trust the rōmaji.
The tag on the back of a name
Books tag most names with one of these; a bare name means the speakers are close.
The marks on a Japanese page
| Mark | What it does |
|---|---|
| 。 | a full stop — a small hollow circle, sitting in its own square of space |
| 、 | a comma |
| 「 」 | corner brackets, where English uses quotation marks: somebody is speaking |
Read the writing, not just the word
- 犬
A kanji. You are after the meaning, not the sound.
Show answer +Hide answer −
犬inu“dog” — the word you decoded as いぬ. - Which of these two is a name or a borrowed word: ミナ or もり?
One of them is spiky.
Show answer +Hide answer −
ミナ, because it is katakana. もりmori“forest” is hiragana, an ordinary word. - What are 「 」 telling you?
Show answer +Hide answer −
Somebody is speaking. They do the job of English quotation marks.