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Namiko's Japanese Language Blog

By Namiko Abe, About.com Guide to Japanese Language since 1997

Learning Hiragana

Monday May 18, 2009
How is your Japanese study going? Have you started learning Japanese writing? If you are new to Japanese, I recommend you learn hiragana first. Japanese children usually start with hiragana as well. They practice each character repeatedly until they master it. It might feel a little tedious, but it is very important to write Japanese with the correct stroke order. There are various Japanese sites that allow you to download free hiragana worksheets. I like the Kids Nifty site as it has cute pictures to make studying fun. It is also pretty easy to follow the instructions, even if you can’t read Japanese. I have also updated my hiragana lessons. I think it will be very rewarding if you start to recognize some hiragana characters. I hope you enjoy studying hiragana. Japanese translation
Comments
May 20, 2009 at 1:35 am
(1) roner says:

im new but im trying hard to learn how to right but tell me should i learn how to speak it first or write it first well any way thanks for helping

May 24, 2009 at 6:46 pm
(2) Yatta says:

ひらがなは簡単だと思いますが漢字はすごく難しいです。
去年から日本語が勉強していますが、いい漢字のならう方や本がみつけられませんでした。いいのをしていますか。

May 26, 2009 at 2:07 pm
(3) kitten says:

Hi i am trying to do those sheets on the nifty kids site, but i don’t understand what you do for the bottom part. The how to thing they gave me didn’t help

May 27, 2009 at 1:18 am
(4) To Yatta says:

ヤッタさんー
このサイトを見たことがありますか。
http://www.whiterabbitpress.com
色々な日本語の勉強本や漢字カードがあります。お勧めですよ。☆
日本語の勉強を頑張ってください。(^ー^)/”

May 30, 2009 at 6:17 am
(5) Martin says:

Games can be a great way to learn a new language. Check out Learn Hiragana and Katakana Games for games to help you learn hiragana and katakana.

June 3, 2009 at 10:19 pm
(6) Ray masaki says:

Hiragana is great it took me about aweek to learn every time i kept forgetting specific ones But just learned to study on the difficult ones the ones that look similar and think of something to remind me of them. katakana is more hard for me i dont study it alot.
Kanji is an art form i have 70 memorized But writting all is difficult

June 7, 2009 at 8:50 pm
(7) Cheryl says:

I was disappointed to try the audio section and have no success. Has it been discontinued?

July 5, 2009 at 9:04 pm
(8) Keith says:

I’ve seen good results with online quizzes… at least for character recognition. Yomuze.com is a good one.

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