Thread: Japanese Lesson #5: Hiragana や-ん

Lesson 5: Hiragana や-ん

Lesson filepack: http://www.aragami.org/japanese/Japa...ic_Lesson5.zip
Quiz: Japanese Lesson #5 Quiz
Master Thread: Free Weekly Japanese Lessons

Material covered in this lesson
-------------------------------
1. The Hiragana Alphabet
2. hiragana - や　ゆ　よ　ら　り　る　れ　ろ　わ　を　ん
3. vocabulary/pronunciation


1. The Hiragana Alphabet (Gojuuon)

With this lesson, you'll be finishing up the basic phonetic alphabet in Japanese (gojuuon). Other sounds will follow, but they're going to be variations of the ones you've already learned.

"Gojuuon" literally means "50 sounds". But there are really only 46 (with 2 obselete characters sometimes included for 48).

The alphabet in it's entireity looks like this:

あ　い　う　え　お
か　き　く　け　こ
さ　し　す　せ　そ
た　ち　つ　て　と
な　に　ぬ　ね　の
は　ひ　ふ　へ　ほ
ま　み　む　め　も
や　　　ゆ　　　よ
ら　り　る　れ　ろ
わ　　　　　　　を
ん

This style of ordering is used in most stores, indexes and other Japanese filing systems. So not only do you need to know these characters, but the order in which they appear in the alphabet. You've had the advantage of learning hiragana in the gojuuon order... the trick now is to make that order 2nd nature.

We'll be working more with ordering in the next lesson... so please take some time to review the ordering presented here.


2. Hiragana や-ん

Now for your next set of hiragana ~ this week you'll be learning 11 characters.

や　- ya
ゆ　- yu
よ - yo

ら - ra
り - ri
る - ru
れ - re
ろ - ro

わ - wa
を - wo

ん - n

Please note that each character contains a vowel sound from the first week's set (a i u e o) with the exception of the final character "ん". As it doesn't contain a vowel sound "ん" can never be used to begin a word.

Excersizes:

- worksheets 25-30


3. Basic Vocabulary

This week's vocabulary list consists entirely of words that can be constructed from the 46 basic hiragana characters.

やすみ - yasumi - rest, break (noun)
ゆか - yuka - floor (noun)
よる - yoru - night (noun)
さくら - sakura - cherry blossom (noun)
りす - risu - squirrel (noun)
れんげ - renge - lotus blossom (noun)
わたし　- watashi - I (noun)
にほん - nihon - Japan (noun)

Excersizes:

- pronunciation drills with the sound files included in this pack
- write each word 5 times in hiragana


Recommended Study Regimen:
----------------------------

Day 1: read the lesson and complete all activities
Day 2-5: repeat worksheets 25-29 and pronunciation drills
Day 6: test yourself with flashcards, review for quiz
Day 7: Quiz (week 5 material)


Fun Semi-Relevant Media of the Week:
YouTube - The Jpn Video Podcast - Hiragana ha to yo - Episode 5
YouTube - The Jpn Video Podcast - Hiragana ra to n - Episode 6
YouTube - Learn Japanese: Hiragana Symbols