Japanese Writing System Part 1: Hiragana

At first, I wasn't convinced I had to learn written Japanese. I figured being able to carry out a conversation in Nihongo (which is what the Japanese call their language) would be enough if and when I visit Japan.

However, I realized that without learning the symbols that comprised written Japanese, all the words and sentences I knew would be useless while trying to navigate the busy streets of Tokyo with a Japanese map, while looking at Japanese street signs and Japanese building names. So no matter how long it took, I had to learn written Japanese too.

So first thing's first... Hiragana...

What is Hiragana?
Hiragana is a Japanese syllabary and one component of the Japanese writing system. It is similar to the western alphabet in that you can spell out words with it. Therefore, you can write a whole sentence in hiragana without involving kanji at all since every kanji can be written with one or several hiraganas.

Note: The other two components of the Japanese writing system are called Katakana (used for borrowed words) and Kanji (adopted Chinese characters).

Usage
The hiragana syllabary consists of 48 syllables and is mainly used to write word endings, known as okurigana in Japanese. Hiragana are also widely used in materials for children, textbooks, animation and comic books. It is also used to write Japanese words which are not normally written with kanji, such as adverbs and some nouns and adjectives, or for words whose kanji are obscure or obselete.

Hiragana chart
Here are the basic hiragana symbols and their corresponding romanizations. Note that the 46 basic hiragana symbols follow the pattern of one consonant (k, s, t, n, h, m, (y), r, w) plus one vowel (a, i, u, e, o) as can be seen below. The only exception is the first line in the table, which consist of only vowels.

Dakuten (濁点) and handakuten (半濁点) markers
There are additional hiragana characters and they are formed using the characters from the chart above by adding the following symbols:

• dakuten marker ゛ - changes k to h, s to z, t to d, and h to b
• handakuten marker ゜ - changes h to p

Yōon modifiers (拗音)
Youon hiragana are hiragana with an "i" vowel (ki き, shi し, chi ち, ni に etc.) plus a small version of ya ゃ, yu ゅ or yo ょ.

Double consonants
And lastly, double consonants occur in hiragana as a small tsu っ. (See the difference: っ <-> つ) It's used before the consonant that is doubled, here are some few examples:

かった - katta
はっぱ - happa

Additional resources
Whew, that's a handful of symbols to memorize! Unfortunately, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer (but hey, I'm not the dullest either). Anyway, here are a few useful resources...

• Real Kana is a very simple yet effective tool for learning Hiragana and Katakana symbols.

• This is a PDF file you can print out and practice writing Hiragana on. Make sure to follow the correct stroke order when writing.

• Typing hiragana symbols isn't easy without a Japanese keyboard or specialized software. With the newbie-friendly "copyable" hiragana symbols from Japanese in 20 Weeks, you can just copy and paste the characters you need. This isn't the best solution, but it'll do if you're just starting to learn hiragana.

• And if all else fails, here's a great mnemonic system relating Hiragana symbols to English words. Click the graphic below to view a larger version of the table.

Sources
Wikipedia
Japanese in 20 Weeks