HIRAGANA EXERCISES

VOWEL LINE

As well as learning to write these characters in your maths book, you must also
learn to read them. Practise reading the following characters aloud until you can
do so with ease.

Although you have learned to use five vowels so far, you are able to read and
write a number of Japanese words:

blue house no
many nephew above
good yes

Now write the following in to the appropriate hiragana.

a ____ o ____ e ____ i ____ u _____

ue ______ ooi _________ au ______

aoi _________ iu ______ iie _________

Now write the following into romaji.

Write each character once. Below.

 HIRAGANA EXERCISES
K LINE

Practise reading the following until you can read them with ease.

With the K line you can extend your range of vocabulary quite a bit. Try reading
these words.

red chrysanthemum
pond tree
girls name train station
go here
write oyster

Practise reading these:

Now read these words:

They mean English, play, key, buy, big, shell, Japanese, large, state, love and blue.

Identify these Japanese characters by writing their pronunciations in roomaji.

___ ___ ___ ___

___ ___ ___ ___ ___
___ ___ ___
 HIRAGANA EXERCISES
S LINE

Write the following roomaji in hiragana.

Ashi (foot) isu (chair)

Okashi (lolly) shio (salt)
Kusa (grass) keshiki (scenery)
Ushi (cow) uso (lie)
Suzushii (cool) suki (like)
Aki (autumn) asa (morning)
Kesa (this morning) sukoshi (a little)
Zaseki (seat) suugaku (maths)
Oishii (yummy) asoko (over there)

Test your self check that you have learned the first 5 lines of Hiragana well by
filling in the missing kana.

__ __
__ __ __
__ __
__ __
__ __ __ __

The teacher will read 10 words in Japanese. These words are written below in
Hiragana. Put the number of the word you hear next to its hiragana equivalent
below.

These are common girls names in Japan. How would you write them ??

Akiko Aiko keiko

 HIRAGANA EXERCISES
T LINE

Can you read these hiragana? Write their pronunciation in roomaji.

___ ___ ___ ___ ___

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___
___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Rewrite the following words in the correct order.

Ashita (tomorrow)

Kisetsu (season)

Kazoku (family)

Deguchi (exit)

Seito (student)

Read the hiragana beside the picture to discover how to say the word in
Japanese. Write the pronunciation of each word in romaji, then practise writing
the word in hiragana.

 HIRAGANA EXERCISES
N LINE

Practise reading the following until you can read them with ease.

Practise writing the following romaji into hiragana.

Nani (what) monosashi ( ruler)

Neko (cat) nuku (to take off)

Tani (valley) nagai (long)

Ane (older sister) inu (dog)

Anata (you) Fune (boat)

Write the following hiragana into romaji.

Put the following into the correct order as they come in the Japanese alphabet.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Now write the missing characters.

 HIRAGANA EXERCISES

1) Practise reading these:

By learning one new line you now know 15 new syllables.

Now you have only 2 complete lines left to learn, plus some
incomplete lines.

Soon you will be able to read this! It means go for it.

2) Try out you artistic abilities and try drawing faces using the hiragana
symbols you have learned so far.

3) Match the following hiragana with their correct

readings by joining them with a line.

pe nu ha ni na bo bi fu ne no ba pu

4) Write the hiragana for the following sounds.

He___ bu___ na___ po___ bi___ pa___ be___ ne___

 HIRAGANA REVISION
R LINE

Practise reading the following.

Now practise reading the following words.

(evening) (lunchbreak) (miso soup)

(seaweed) (cloth wrap) (crane)
(fishing) (hiragana) (history)
(science) (paperfolding) (thank-you)

Write the following romaji into hiragana.

Raku (easy) tori (bird)

Saru (monkey) hare (clear skies)
Roba (donkey) kiru (to cut/wear)
Norimasu (to ride) reizouko (refridgerator)
Hiru (lunchtime) kore (this)
Furui (old) karai (spicy)

Match the following hiragana with the correct romaji.

Ra ri ru re ro na ni nu ne no

Below are pairs of words, the teacher will read one, circle the one you hear.

1 2

3 4

5 6

7 8
 HIRAGANA EXERCISES

1) Practise Reading

2) Try writing these.

Hitachi mitsubishi Toshiba matsuda fuji Suzuki Toyota Honda

What do these companies produce?

3) Put the hiragana in each of the following rows in order. Write

the numbers 1-6 in the brackets in the order that they should
be.

4) Write in the missing characters according to the Japanese

alphabet order you have learnt them in.

5) Write which characters you need to add tentens or a maru, to

get the following letters.

G D P

Z B
HIRAGANA EXERCISES


1) Practise reading:

2) Someone is having trouble writing these Japanese surnames in hiragana. Help

them by circling the correct choice for each name.

Ishikawa
Nakamura
Takahashi
Watanabe
Yamashita

3) Now you can write these given names:

Mayumi yooko yuuko yasuko aya yasuo yoshi yasuhiko

And these surnames:

Yamamoto sugiyama yamaha yamada yukiyama fujiyama

As you can see there are lots of names with Yama. This means mountain in
Japanese and its wide use in names reflects the many mountains in Japan.

4) Write name tags in hiragana for these students.

Mamoru Midori Nozomi Shinji

 HIRAGANA REVISION
WA LINE

There are no hiragana symbols for wi, wu, or we.

is the particle o or wo. It is only used after a word, to mark the

object of the sentence. If the o sound is part of a word you should use

e.g. koora I drink coke.

is the only syllable which does not contain a vowel sound. It can be
used at the end or in the middle of a word.
E.g. (book), (tonight)

When there is a double n sound in the word, the first n is always and
the next is the appropriate symbol.
e.g. (hello) (what kind of)

Practise reading the following.

Practise writing the following.

Wan wan (woof woof) watashi (I)

Warui (bad) kantan (simple)

Wakai (young) san (three)

Write the pronunciation of the following.

THE COMBINED SYLLABLES OF HIRAGANA
Now that you know all the syllables, you know that there is no such syllable
as kyo in hiragana. So you need to learn how to form this and other similar
sounds so you can write words such as TOKYO and KYOTO. Some Japanese
words have sounds that are made by joining two sounds together. You can
write these sounds in hiragana by combining , , and with the hiragana
listed below. When you write these combinations you must always write
or smaller than the character with which they are combined. Practise
writing them in the boxes below.

kya kyu kyo

gya gyu gyo

sha shu sho

ja ju jo

cha chu cho

nya nyu nyo

hya hyu hyo

bya byu byo

pya pyu pyo

mya myu myo

rya ryu ryo