Learn hiragana: the full chart, how each character is written, and where to practise

Hiragana is the first thing you learn in Japanese, and it is also the part that actually ends: two weeks of short daily sessions and you can sound out anything written in kana. This page gives you the full hiragana chart with stroke order animations, an honest guide to how each sound is pronounced, and free practice you can do straight in the browser, with no account needed.

Open the app Free, no account. Works offline too.

How many hiragana are there, and how the chart is built

Hiragana has 46 basic characters. On top of those come 25 forms with diacritics — dakuten (two small strokes) and handakuten (a small circle) — which turn k into g, s into z, t into d, and h into b or p. Then there are 33 combinations written with a small ya, yu or yo: きゃ, しゅ, ちょ. So the full chart looks crowded, but it is not a hundred separate things to memorise: the extra forms are derived from the 46 basics, with only a couple of exceptions: じ and ぢ (like ず and づ) sound the same, and しゃ is „sha”, not „shya”. The chart is organised by consonant row (K, S, T, N, H, M, Y, R, W) and by five vowel columns, always in the order a, i, u, e, o. Learn that order once and you have the skeleton of the whole system, including the few gaps where a character simply does not exist.

How hiragana actually sounds

Japanese vowels are short and pure — closer to Spanish or Italian than to English. The trap for English speakers is turning them into diphthongs: え is a flat "eh", not "ay", and お is a flat "oh", not "ow". A few consonants also do not match their romaji at first glance. し is "shi", not "si". ち is "chi". つ is the ts in "cats", squeezed onto a vowel. ふ sits between f and a soft h, with relaxed lips. And ら り る れ ろ are a single tap of the tongue, much closer to the d in "ladder" than to an English r. Vowel length changes meaning: おばさん is "aunt", おばあさん is "grandmother". ん also shifts with whatever follows it: before p, b or m it comes out as an m (せんぱい sounds like „sempai”). Every character and every word here has a recorded native voice, and you can practise saying them with the microphone.

Stroke order, and why it is not a formality

Every character has a fixed writing order: top to bottom, left to right, horizontal stroke before the vertical that crosses it. This is not teacher pedantry. Follow the stroke order and the proportions take care of themselves, so the character stays readable even when you write quickly. It is also the same logic you will reuse for kanji later, so none of it is wasted effort. The usual mistakes happen with あ, ぬ, ま, な and や, where the loop comes last rather than first. An animation settles that faster than any written description: watch it a few times, then draw the character on screen and get a score for your attempt. If you prefer paper, the writing sheets print on A4 in portrait or landscape, in a pen version and a thicker marker version.

A realistic two-week plan

Here is how to learn hiragana without losing it again a month later: work in whole rows, not in scattered characters. Five characters a day, 15–20 minutes, and review the earlier rows before you move on. Going あいうえお, か, さ, た, な, は, ま, や, ら, わ・ん gets you through the 46 basics in about ten days; dakuten and the combinations add another two or three days, since they are derived rather than new. The pairs that trip everyone up are さ/ち, ぬ/め, れ/ね/わ, る/ろ, は/ほ and つ/し. Do not learn them apart — put them side by side and name the concrete difference in the strokes. The classic mistake is staying in passive recognition with the romaji sitting next to the character. Cover the romaji early and read whole words instead. The practice quizzes are free, and the spaced repetition brings back the characters you keep missing more often.

From recognising characters to actually reading

Knowing a character in isolation counts for very little. The real jump happens when you read words and sentences without spelling them out in your head. So move to short texts as soon as you know 30–40 characters, even with gaps left — reading is what closes them. Japanese text in the app can be displayed three ways: hiragana only, katakana only, or normally with kanji and furigana. Hiragana-only mode is exactly what you want at this stage, because you can read real texts without kanji stopping you on every line. There are over a hundred reading texts with comprehension questions and a dictionary of roughly 3,300 words with definitions, Romanian and English translations, and recorded native audio. Everything works offline, there is an Android app, and you can move your progress between phone and computer with a code, without an account.

With diacritics (dakuten and handakuten)

Combos (yōon)

Frequently asked questions

How many hiragana characters are there?

46 basic characters, plus 25 forms with dakuten and handakuten and 33 combinations using small ya, yu and yo. Only the 46 need real memorising; the rest follow from them.

How long does it take to learn hiragana?

At 15–20 minutes a day, most people can recognise the whole chart in one to two weeks. Writing it fluently by hand takes a few weeks more.

Should I start with hiragana or katakana?

Start with hiragana. It appears in almost every Japanese sentence, and katakana comes much faster afterwards because the sounds are identical.

Do I really need to learn to write by hand?

Not strictly, if you only want to read — but writing fixes the shapes in memory and helps with lookalike characters. You can practise by drawing on screen or on the printable sheets.

Is the practice free?

Yes, everything is free and no account is required. The app also works offline, and you can sync your progress between devices with a code.