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A. Japanese Alphabets: 1. Write From Top To Bottom B. Write From Left To Right

This document provides information about Japanese alphabets and hiragana characters. It discusses the three Japanese writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana is the most basic system and is used to write Japanese words. It has 46 basic characters that each represent a consonant-vowel combination. The document reviews stroke order rules for writing hiragana and how to end each stroke with tome, hane, or harai. It includes exercises for writing hiragana for vocabulary words and reading hiragana characters with romanization. Links are provided for additional resources on Japanese calligraphy and hiragana charts.

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89 views

A. Japanese Alphabets: 1. Write From Top To Bottom B. Write From Left To Right

This document provides information about Japanese alphabets and hiragana characters. It discusses the three Japanese writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana is the most basic system and is used to write Japanese words. It has 46 basic characters that each represent a consonant-vowel combination. The document reviews stroke order rules for writing hiragana and how to end each stroke with tome, hane, or harai. It includes exercises for writing hiragana for vocabulary words and reading hiragana characters with romanization. Links are provided for additional resources on Japanese calligraphy and hiragana charts.

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AA
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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A.

Japanese Alphabets

Hiragana is one of the Japanese writing systems in Japan along with Katakana and Kanji
(Chinese characters). Hiragana is the basic foundation in learning the Japanese language as it is
used to write Japanese words. Most students learn Hiragana at the very beginning of the study as
this is the key to learning basic Japanese. Hiragana and Kanji are used widely to form a sentence
while Katakana is used mostly for foreign words. Recently, Rōmaji is also used to describe the
sound of the Japanese in the Roman alphabet. It is mainly used for the convenience of foreigners
who are not familiar with Japanese characters.

B. Hiragana Characters

Hiragana has 46 basic letters. Each hiragana character represents a consonant-vowel sound.
In the chart provided on page 1, you can see all of the basic hiragana characters along with the
closest sounding roman letters. It is read from top to bottom and right to left, which is how most
Japanese books are written. The five vowel sounds, a (ah), i (ee), u (oo), e (eh), o (oh), are
combined with the consonant sounds k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, and w. The “n” is the only character that
does not end in a vowel sound. Also, it is not used at the beginning of any Japanese words

C. General rules of stroke orders.

Japanese characters were all originally written with a brush, so writing the strokes of a
hiragana character in the right stroke and order is important in getting the shape of the character
correct.

1. Write from top to bottom b. Write from left to right

2. Write first the horizontal before vertical

When horizontal and vertical lines cross, horizontal lines are usually written before vertical lines.

1
3. Write the Character-spanning strokes last

The vertical line that passes through other strokes is written after the strokes passed through are written.

D. Ways to end a stroke.

When you write any Japanese character, you should always pay attention to these three
things. They explain how to finish drawing each line in a letter.

1. Tome

Tome means “stop”. You bring your pen to a


complete stop at the end of a stroke.

2. Hane

Hane means “jump”. You end the stroke with


a slight flick.

3. Harai

Harai means “sweeping”. This is the broad


sweep at the end of a stroke.
Exercise 1:
Write inside the box the corresponding Hiragana of the following words.

1. UE (Above, top)

2. AI (Love)

3. AOI (Blue)

4. IE (House, home)
Exercise 2:
Write inside the box the corresponding Hiragana of the following words.

1. KAO (Face)

2. KI (Tree)

3. KOE (Voice)

4. AKAI (Red)
Exercise 3:
Write inside the box the corresponding Hiragana of the following words.

1. OISHII (Delicious)

2. ISHI (Stone)

3. KASA (Umbrella)

4. SUKI (Like)
Wrting practice

I. Write the Hiragana of the following words inside the boxes.

1. SEKAI- world

2. IKA- squid

3. E- picture, drawing

4. OKASHI- sweets

5. SAKE- wine

6. EKI- train station

Reading practice

II. Read the following hiragana and write the Roman letters in the
parentheses.

1. うそ （ ）lie

2. あさ （ ）morning

3. あせ （ ）sweat

4. こし （ ）waist

5. けさ （ ）this morning
https://kanjiart.net/column/calligraphy/
https://www.szfki.hu/~akiss/others/hiragana_table.pdf

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