Learning Hiragana: Finishing Up the Final Rows

Learning Hiragana is a crucial part of becoming a speaker of the Japanese language. Not only does the alphabet provide you with all the pronunciation sounds you’ll have to learn in Japanese, but also gives you an opportunity to be able to read the Japanese language. Keep in mind there’s also Katakana and Kanji left to learn, but your teacher can potentially translate everything into Hiragana for you!

As this is the last article for learning Hiragana, let’s test the Hiragana you’ve learned up till now:

なに

かたい

ふつう

たべもの

のみもの

さしみ

Can you read the above words? Please try sounding them out, if not you might want to review past articles before progressing to the final stages of learning Hiragana. Without further ado, the final rows for Hiragana are:

For “Ru” and “Ro”, please note the characters are very similar. Ru just has a circle added at the bottom.

For “Wo”, please note it’s just a long o sound, but with a slight w sound. The sound really doesn’t exist in English, same with the “n” sound. Just remember, pronounce “in” without the vowel sound.

This concludes our learning Hiragana series, with the final 10 characters added to your repertoire of Hiragana. Hopefully you’ve learned some helpful tips about writing and recognizing the Hiragana, and once you’ve mastered this alphabet you’ve mastered the first step to learning Japanese. Congratulations!

Answer Key

なに nani – what in English

かたい katai – tight

ふつう - futsuu – regular

たべもの – tabemono – food

のみもの – nomimono – drink

さしみ – sashimi