Language Book (Japan Edition)

Hiragana

Let's start with the vowels. Just like in English, Japanese language too has 5 vowels. I'll be writing down the pronunciation within the brackets. The vowels are:

あ (ah)
い (e)
う (uh)
え (eh)
お (o)

NOTE: The ones within the brackets are not the romanized version. I wrote it in that way so that you can understand how it is pronounced. In romanized version, the letters are a, i, u, e, o respectively.

There are 9 consonant sounds and a special sound in Hiragana. Some of these consonants are altered using some special symbols and thus helps to produce new sounds.

Let's start with the K- column. The main letters are:
か (ka)
き (ki)
く (ku)
け (ke)
こ (ko)
As you can see, the letters are pronounced combining the K-sound with the vowels. In K-column, a special symbol is used to produce the G-sound. This symbol is called "dakuten" or "tenten". It looks like this (ﾞ). It kinda looks like quotation marks. It is placed on the upper right corner of the letter. The letters of K-column with dakuten are:
が (ga)
ぎ (gi)
ぐ (gu)
げ (ge)
ご (go)

Let's move to the next column. The S-column. Same as the K-column it has 5 main letters and has a special use of dakuten. The main letters are:
さ (sa)
し (shi)
す (su)
せ (se)
そ (so)
Here, with dakuten the letters produce J-sound. The letters are:
ざ (ja)
じ (ji)
ず (ju)
ぜ (je)
ぞ (jo)

NOTE: While typing the letters of S-column with dakuten, I noticed that to bring the letters I had to press Z instead of J. But the pronunciation is with J. So I wrote J-sounds within the brackets instead.

Next comes the T-column. Now this column is a bit tricky as the pronunciation of some letters is a bit different here. The main letters are:
た (ta)
ち (chi)
つ (tsu)
て (te)
と (to)
With dakuten, these letters are:
だ (da)
ぢ (ji)
づ (ju)
で (de)
ど (do)
There's a special character under this T-column. This is called "Chiisai tsu" or "small tsu". Just like how it is named, chiisai tsu is a smaller version of the letter "つ". It looks like (っ). Well the keyboard doesn't help too much and I don't know if you're getting the difference or not. For now just notice that "tsu" is written in bold but "chiisai tsu" is not. This special character doesn't have a particular pronunciation. It's a grammatical particle actually. This can't be used on its own but can be used in the middle or end of any sentence. This used as a glottal stop.

Let's see the N-column now. N-column doesn't have any use of dakuten. So there's only 5 letter. These are:
な (na)
に (ni)
ぬ (nu)
ね (ne)
の (no)

Next comes the H-column. Now here's another tricky column. Let's see the main letters first. These are:
は (ha)
ひ (he)
ふ (phu)
へ (hae)
ほ (ho)

With dakuten the H will be pronounced as B. The letters are:
ば (ba)
び (be)
ぶ (bhu)
べ (bae)
ぼ (bo)

This H-column doesn't end here. There's a special symbol that's exclusive for this column. This symbol is called "handakuten" or "maru". This looks like (゜). This makes the P sound. The letters are:
ぱ (pa)
ぴ (pe)
ぷ (pu)
ぺ (pae)
ぽ (po)

Let's move to the M-column. Just like the N-column, this doesn't have any special use of dakuten. So there are only 5 letters. These are:
ま (ma)
み (me)
む (mu)
め (mae)
も (mo)

Next we will see the R-column. In case you are wondering, no I didn't skip the Y-column. I'll get back to it after R-column. So R-column has only 5 letters. So there's no dakuten. These letters are:
ら (ra)
り (ri)
る (ru)
れ (re)
ろ (ro)

Now let's see the Y-column. This is the most interesting column. Here you get only 3 letters. But with these 3 letters you can create digraphs. We'll cover the digraphs in our next chapter. For now, let's see the 3 letters. These are:
や (ya)
ゆ (yu)
よ (yo)

Now for our final column we have the W-column. This has only 2 letters. These doesn't create any digraphs or anything. These letters are:
わ (wa)
を (wo)

Now to our final Hiragana character which doesn't belong to any column, that is ん (m/n). It is just a separate sound which varies depending on what are you putting beside it. I'll explain it when we are covering the Japanese grammar.

For now this is it for the Hiragana characters. In our next chapter we'll cover the digraphs.

TIP: If you are having a hard time trying to memorize the letters and their respective sounds, try connecting them with some mnemonics. It helps a lot as some characters do look similar.

TIP: While pronouncing the letters, try making a softer sound. I'm not sure if you get it, but if you watch anime or some Japanese videos then you will see that their pronunciation is a bit soft. Even when they are pronouncing english words. So yeah, imitating their voice/sound helps here.

TIP: Try making a hiragana chart of your own and place it somewhere you look everyday. In this way you can familiarize yourself with the letters quickly.

For more resources you can check
https://www.japanesepod101.com/ or watch videos posted on their YouTube channel. They have separate videos on each writing system. Their mnemonics help a lot. I hope this helped :) Also I'm posting the Hiragana chart that I made for myself. Check this out:

For now
さよなら
(Sayonara/ Bye)