Hiragana
All 46 base hiragana plus dakuten, handakuten and yōon. Tap any character for stroke-by-stroke animation, writing order and pronunciation.
Hiragana (ひらがな) is one of Japan's three writing systems, alongside katakana and kanji. Born in the 9th century from cursive simplifications of kanji, these 46 phonetic characters each represent a syllable. Hiragana is the first script taught to Japanese children — and the natural starting point for learning Japanese.
Hiragana is used for native Japanese words (yamato-kotoba), grammar particles (は, が, を…), verb and adjective endings, and anything that has no kanji equivalent. In practice, even a kanji-heavy text has hiragana in almost every sentence.
The hiragana chart is organized as gojūon — a grid of 10 consonants × 5 vowels (a, i, u, e, o), so 50 cells but only 45 are in use today (the sounds yi, ye and wu never existed, and two other characters fell out of use). Adding ん, which sits outside the grid, gives the 46 base hiragana. On top of that sit 20 dakuten (が, ざ, だ, ば…) marked with a double tick, 5 handakuten (ぱ, ぴ, ぷ, ぺ, ぽ) with a small circle, and 33 yōon (きゃ, しゅ, ちょ…) formed by combining two characters. 104 sounds in total.
The most effective method combines three things: seeing the character, hearing its pronunciation, and writing it by hand. Darumoji offers all three — flashcards for recognition, timed quizzes for speed, and free tracing to lock stroke order into muscle memory. Expect 1 to 2 weeks to memorize the 46 base hiragana.