Vocabulary & Hiragana At Once

I like how this video is made and the fact that it helps both with refreshing hiragana and gaining some words effortlessly.

Extending Sounds, First Vocabulary Post

* あお (ao) blue
* あか (aka) red
* あき (aki) autumn

* いぬ (inu) dog
* いもうと (imōto) little sister
* いいえ (īe) no

* うえ (ue) above
* うさぎ (usagi) rabbit
* うなぎ　(unagi) eel

* えいご (eigo) English
* えき (eki) station
* えんぴつ (enpitsu) pencil

* おおきい (ōkī) big
* おちゃ (ocha) tea
* おんな (onna) woman

One can extend the vowel sound of a kana by affixing either a あ、い、or う depending on the vowel. The vowel would be extended for one more mora or beat. In most cases, あ follows あ; い follows い or え and う follows う or お.

There are rare exceptions where an え vowel is extended by adding え or an お vowel is extended by お. Some examples of this include おねえさん (onēsan) "older sister", おおい, and おおきい (ōkii) "larger".

One giveaway to an English-speaking accent in Japanese speech is the use of a diphthong for the elongated "e" sound (Such as the sound in "Eight"). In actuality, "えい" is pronounced correctly by saying the え kana for a longer duration of time.

It is important to make sure you hold the vowel sound long enough because you can be saying "middle-aged lady" （おばさん）(obasan) instead of "grandmother" （おばあさん）(obāsan) if you do not stretch it out correctly.

source: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese/Kana/Lessons/Hiragana/Lesson_1

Hiragana, Compound Sounds

By adding a small "っ" (tsu) in front of a syllable, it causes the subsequent consonant to double. This kana results in a slight pause between the two consonants (a double consonant pause). A couple examples are かった (katta) and しっけ (shikke).

Certain sounds ending with -い(i) ( き(ki), し(shi), ち(chi), に(ni), ひ(hi), み(mi), り(ri) and their voiced variants) can be followed by small versions (ゃ, ゅ, and ょ) of the hiragana や(ya), ゆ(yu), and よ(yo). In this case, the two hiragana are not pronounced individually, but rather as one sound.

In most cases, the compound sound is the consonant of the base syllable followed by the modifier (fjord may be an example of a similar compound sound in English):

きゃ (kya)
きゅ (kyu)
きょ (kyo)

In other cases the y sound disapears entirely:

しゃ (sha)
しゅ (shu)
しょ (sho)

Hiragana Exercises

Do your homework. Write every symbol 50 or better 100 times. If you do, after 2-4 days Hiragana should find it's place in your brain. One of the many pages I scribed today:

Starbucks Hiragana

Ei is a professional "Japanese as a Second Language" teacher from Tokyo. We do this blog together. Click on any part of the Hiragana table below to hear how to read it. Notice jazzy Starbucks noise on the background...

This lesson starts from the second page because I used Livescribe for the first time - and I did a mistake - all following lessons are fine.

To view this lesson like it should be, click on orange play button, and then, click on orange "full screen" button on the top of the "notebook" page. You'll see on the side bar that lesson has two pages. Click 2nd page.

Click on any part of the green text to hear how to read it.

Ei writing & reading Hiragana