Copying Vinayakan's idea hehe.. But I guess it's ok
So, I'll teach you the hiragana syllabary. Japanese language is written with a mix of three (or four, if you count Arabic numerals) different writing systems; Hiragana, Katakana and Kanjis. Hiragana & Katakana are both syllabaries, which means that they have a symbol for syllable. This means that the word "hiragana" would be written with four characters- hi-ra-ga-na. Kanjis are Chinese characters, and you need to know around 2000 of them. Hiragana is used to write some Japanese words and word suffixes and Katakana's used to write loan words.
LESSON 1
Vowels.. there are five of them in Japanese:
A, pronounced like the English u in cut.
E, pronounced like the English e in bet.
I, pronounced like the English i in sit.
O, pronounced like the English o in of.
U, pronounced like the English oo in foot, but half shorter.
A =
あ
E =
え
I =
い
O =
お
U =
う
Ka =
か
Ke =
け
Ki =
き
Ko =
こ
Ku =
く
LONG VOWELS & DOUBLE CONSONANTS
They are always long and doubled.
kaa is kaa, not ka and nonno is nonno, not nono!!!
if you want to write "kaa" you write ka + a = かあ
same with doubled consonants.
EXERCISES:
Write:
kaeko | kuka | kaake | kikaaku | koukae | okei | kaiku
Transliterate:
あいこ
けこあえく
ききこ
いくこ
おいかええ