Not all kanji has this reading compound, however. Apparently 67% of the joyo kanji have this phonetic compound radical inside of them, though that doesn’t mean they’re always helpful to you, it just means one of these radicals exists there. Let’s first take a closer look at how you can find these “phonetic compounds.”

The Anatomy Of A Kanji

A standard kanji is made of a couple of parts (and sometimes some garbage). The left side / top is usually the “classifier radical.” This is the radical that you can use to look up the kanji in a kanji dictionary. Sometimes it may even give a hint to the meaning of a kanji, though this is pretty hit or miss (mostly miss). The right side is usually what’s known as the “phonetic compound.” This portion has a specific reading attached to it. If you see this phonetic compound, you can sometimes guess the reading of the kanji. Sometimes by learning one phonetic compound’s reading you can know how to read six or seven other kanji that contain it.

Now there are exceptions… tons of them, unfortunately.

First of all, sometimes the phonetic compound is on the left side, and not the right. This happens when the classifier radical is one of those classifier radicals that normally gets put on the right side. Anyways, you’ll have to watch out for these.

Secondly, not all kanji have a phonetic compound inside of them. Like I mentioned earlier, only 67% of them have it, and they’re not particularly useful. Of the ones that do have a phonetic compound, around 25% have readings that aren’t consistent and are irregular. Even the ones that are fairly consistent with their readings have exceptions. Basically, this technique is at best a way to guess the reading of a kanji and nothing more. Still, something is better than nothing. Just imagine if you’re taking the JLPT and you’re on the kanji section. This sort of thing will help you get a few extra answers correct.

Phonetic Compounds And Their Kanji

To find the phonetic compounds, I sat down with a kanji dictionary going through all the possible readings in the back index. After spending about a half hour going through these one by one, I realized that someone else has probably done all the work for me. Thank goodness, someone had. Luckily for me, a Hiroko Townsend of San Diego State University put in a lot of work into her thesis, listing these out for everyone to enjoy. Thanks Hiroko! You’re a boss.

Here are the radicals that contain fairly consistent phonetic compounds. There are some exceptions (not listed below), but in general they’re pretty straightforward. If you learn the phonetic radical / kanji in the left side column then you know the readings for all the kanji to its right. For some kanji that’s only slightly useful. For others, you learn the readings of a lot of kanji.

几 (き) → 机, 肌, 飢
亡 (ぼう) → 忙, 忘, 盲, 荒, 望, 妄
干 (かん) → 汗, 肝, 奸, 刊, 岸
己 (き) → 起, 記, 紀, 忌
工 (こう) → 紅, 空, 虹, 江, 攻, 功, 肛,
及 (きゅう) → 吸, 級, 扱
士 (し) → 仕, 志, 誌
方 (ほう, ぼう) → 肪, 坊, 紡, 防, 妨, 房, 謗, 傍, 芳, 訪, 放
中 (ちゅう) → 忠, 沖, 仲, 虫, 狆
化 (か) → 花, 貸, 靴
反 (はん) → 版, 板, 坂, 飯, 販, 叛
分 (ふん) → 粉, 紛, 雰
半 (はん) → 伴, 絆, 拌, 判
白 (はく) → 伯, 拍, 泊, 迫, 舶, 狛, 柏, 箔, 珀
皮 (ひ) → 彼, 被, 疲, 被, 披
付 (ふ) → 府, 符, 附, 俯
包 (ほう) → 抱, 泡, 胞, 砲, 飽, 咆
可 (か) → 河, 何, 荷, 苛, 呵, 歌
古 (こ) → 居, 固, 故, 枯, 個, 湖, 箇, 沽, 姑, 苦
生 (せい) → 姓, 性, 星, 牲, 惺
正 (せい) → 征, 政, 症, 整, 性, 牲
司 (し) → 伺, 詞, 嗣, 飼
且 (そ) → 粗, 祖, 狙, 阻, 組
旦 (たん) → 但, 胆, 疸, 担
令 (れい) → 冷, 鈴, 零, 領, 齢, 鈴
立 (りゅう) → 竜, 滝, 粒, 笠, 龍
申 (しん) → 神, 伸, 呻, 押, 紳
召 (しょう) → 招, 沼, 昭, 紹, 詔, 照
安 (あん) → 案, 按, 鞍, 鮟
同 (どう) → 洞, 胴, 桐, 恫, 銅, 洞, 筒
寺 (じ) → 侍, 持, 時, 塒, 峙
旬 (じゅん) → 洵, 殉, 恂
各 (かく) → 格, 喀, 閣, 額
圭 (けい) → 掛, 桂, 畦, 珪, 罫, 鮭, 硅
糸 (けい) → 系, 係, 繋
結 (けつ) → 潔
光 (こう) → 恍
交 (こう) → 校, 絞, 狡, 較, 郊, 効, 咬
共 (きょう, こう) → 供, 恭, 洪, 哄
次 (し)  → 姿, 諮, 資
成 (せい) → 盛, 誠, 筬, 城
朱 (しゅ) → 株, 珠, 殊, 蛛
我 (が) → 峨, 蛾, 餓, 俄, 鵞
甫 (ほ) → 浦, 捕, 哺, 匍, 補, 蒲, 輔, 舗
見 (けん) → 硯, 蜆, 現
辰 (しん) → 唇, 振, 賑, 震, 娠
肖 (しょう) → 宵, 消, 硝
弟 (てい) → 第, 剃. 涕
廷 (てい) → 庭, 挺, 艇
良 (りょう) → 郎, 浪, 朗, 狼, 廊
直 (ちょく, しょく) → 植, 埴, 殖, 稙
長 (ちょう) → 張, 帳, 脹
非 (ひ) → 悲, 緋, 誹, 鯡, 琲, 扉
朋 (ほう) → 崩, 棚, 硼
果 (か) → 課, 菓, 踝, 顆
官 (かん) → 棺, 管, 館
奇 (き) → 崎, 埼, 椅
其 (き) → 期, 欺, 棋, 基, 旗
金 (きん) → 欽, 錦, 銀
采 (さい) → 彩, 菜, 採
青 (せい) → 清, 靖, 精, 晴, 請, 情, 鯖, 静
昔 (しゃく) → 借, 惜, 錯
尚 (しょう) → 常, 裳, 掌
昌 (しょう) → 娼, 唱, 菖, 晶
禺 (ぐう) → 遇, 寓, 隅, 偶
扁 (へん) → 編, 偏, 篇, 蝙
則 (そく) → 側, 測, 惻
相 (そう) → 想, 箱, 霜
湘 (しょう) → 廂
莫 (ばく) → 摸, 膜, 漠, 博, 縛, 幕
高 (こう) → 縞, 稿, 藁,
曹 (そう) → 遭, 槽, 糟
曽 (そう) → 贈, 僧, 憎, 増
童 (どう) → 撞, 憧, 瞳
義 (ぎ) → 儀, 議, 犠, 蟻, 艤

Uses a radical from obsolete Japanese
孝* (こう) → 孝,  老, 考
径** (けい) → 径,  経, 軽, 怪, 茎
乍 (さく) → 作, 昨, 窄, 酢, 搾
低** (てい) → 低,  底, 抵, 邸, 抵
券* (けん) → 券,  巻, 圏, 拳
根**  (こん) → 根,  痕, 恨, 懇, 墾
退 (たい) → 腿
峡** (きょう) → 峡,  狭, 挟
浅** (せん) → 浅,  銭, 践
珍** (しん) → 診,  疹, 参
峰** (ほう) → 峰,  逢, 縫, 蜂, 蓬,
俊** (しゅん) → 俊, 峻, 悛, 逡, 竣, 浚
通** (つう) → 通, 桶, 痛
険** (けん) → 険, 験, 検
過 (か) → 渦,  堝, 鍋, 蝸, 窩, 禍
福** (ふく) → 福,  副, 複, 幅, 富, 蝠
滴** (てき) → 滴, 適,  敵
壁* (へき) → 壁, 癖
燥* (そう) → 燥,  操, 藻
* remove the bottom radical component
** remove the left side radical component

That right there is approximately 100 kanji/radicals that, if you learn the reading of them, you can guess the reading of around 500 total kanji. That’s around 1/4 of the joyo kanji list. Not a bad shortcut! I think one issue is that a lot of people don’t know that this little trick exists. Just by knowing that you can do this, you’ll begin to notice these patterns showing up in your own kanji learning. This will help to accelerate your kanji learning by a considerable amount in the long run.

So, if you’re studying kanji, go through this list and start making the connections. What phonetic compounds do you already know? Now, see what other kanji there are to the right that you know. See how it all sort of makes sense? Kanji isn’t as insane as people tend to think, though it’s still super complicated no matter how you look at it. You’ll spend a lot of time learning the kanji (even if you’re using, say, WaniKani), but things like this will win you some extra time.

Good luck studying that kanji thing!

–

Sources:
Phonetic Components In Japanese Characters
Decoding Kanji

Available Japanese Books On Amazon USA

Now as we go through this article, don’t get your hopes up too high. Just about everything has a “it’s good … but” sort of phrase attached to it. Doesn’t mean you won’t be able to study with it and have an awesome time, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

First up is the selection. The reason (I’m guessing) why the Amazon US store is able to offer Japanese books at all in the first place is because of the books that are being offered. I’m not really up on what’s big book-wise in Japan right now (okay, maybe a little bit), but I can tell you for sure it certainly isn’t these books. The Japanese books available on the Amazon US store are either old, self-published, or both. Definitely not the cream of the crop, but if you’re using these for studying, then who cares, right?

But, being that the books aren’t exactly “top notch,” you do get some perks. First of all, they’re available to you in the first place. That’s nice. Second, they’re super cheap. In fact, many are free (with many more free if you have an Amazon Prime account).

Go ahead and browse the Amazon Kindle Store for books in the Japanese language. You’ll see what I mean.

But, beggars can’t be choosers. I just went through and literally judged every single book by its cover (and price), downloaded a ton of cheap / free books, and started going through them.

Downloading And Reading

The cool thing about the Kindle is you can buy and download a book to any number of devices; your phone, your tablet, your Kindle, and even your computer is game for becoming a Kindle reading device. This would be really great (and I imagine it will happen eventually, but not now) if your Mac/PC version of Kindle actually supported Japanese text. For now, these Japanese books will only work on:

• iOS / Android Devices (tablets, phones)
• Kindle Paperwhite
• Kindle Fire

So, your options are a bit limited right now. I hope that changes in the near future as it really limits things for studying. I for one am looking forward to when I can read Japanese books on the Kindle app for my computer. It’ll make looking things up a lot easier, for sure. Cloud (browser) reader also isn’t compatible.

Luckily, a lot of people have iOS or Android devices these days making it possible, though slightly more difficult, to study Japanese via Japanese books from the Kindle store.

Studying

This is the important part for you all, right? Right off the bat, studying with Japanese Kindle books could use a lot of improvements. There’s quite an inconsistency between books too. Some books are okay to study with while others are nearly impossible. I’m guessing it has something to do with how the author submitted the book to the Kindle Store, but beyond that I’m not sure. Luckily they’re so cheap (and often free) that you can just download a bunch until you find something you like.

Here are the issues I had with the iPad version, though I’ve read that they carry over to Android versions as well. While none of them make it impossible to study, they all make it more uncomfortable and less efficient.

Issue #1: Dictionary / Lookup Feature

For some books, when you try to select some text to look it up, it just selects the entire page, making it impossible to look up words you don’t know. For the ones that do work, it’s not really smart about what it selects (iBook books, for example, do a pretty good job grabbing actual words). So, you’ll spend a little time adjusting the selection tool to grab the word you want. This wouldn’t be too bad if it was the only issue. Words that have been conjugated usually don’t come up with definitions at all when you highlight them. After a while, you’ll find this pretty irritating, so you’ll just end up looking up a kanji the old fashioned way.

Also, while I actually kind of like this, when the dictionary does work, it’s only going to show you the Japanese definition in Japanese. I’ve always thought reading these is a good way to study Japanese, but for some it will be a deal breaker. It will always show the readings of words so you can look them up on jisho or something, though (that is unless it’s having one of its conjugation issues, though you can select the individual kanji, get the reading, and look it up from there).

Lastly, if you thought readings would help, sometimes they’re just plain wrong… well, they’re right, but not for the word you’re trying to look up. I found several instances of this, which makes me think that beginners will want to stay away. Intermediate / advanced students should be able to figure out when something doesn’t look right, though.

Issue #2: No Copy/Paste

Many of the ebooks highlight too much (and you aren’t able to adjust it)

This is somewhat the same as Issue #1. If you can’t copy and paste words, it’s harder to look them up. You’ll need to have a computer nearby / available to look things up with, making it a little less convenient for those of you who don’t want to bring your iPad and laptop to the coffee shop. Them first world problems, mang.

But, It does work…

… and I think it will get better. At least, one can hope and dream. If you were just allowed to use the built in dictionary instead of whatever they’re providing, and if only the dictionary worked more of the time, you’d have yourself a nice tool to study with. Once this is compatible with your computer – oh man, forget about it – it’ll be amazing.

Studying with Japanese ebooks is like a dream come true, too. So long as you have the kanji skills it will allow you to study Japanese anytime anywhere. Here’s one method on how to study with Japanese Kindle books:

1. Read through as much as you can in one sitting. Depending on your level, that could be 1 page or 20 pages (or more). Highlight / write down the words / kanji you don’t know somewhere else. I use Evernote for this.
2. Look up, study, and learn said words that you wrote down. Put them into an SRS (Anki, perhaps?).
3. After you’ve studied the things you didn’t know, try to read through it again. This time mark the words you still don’t know and study them again.
4. After you can read the pages comfortably-ish, read it out loud. Reading out loud is much better practice and you’ll figure out what you do or don’t know. There’s a reason why they make kids read their books out loud while they’re learning to read.
5. Rinse and repeat.

The key here is to do this a little bit every day. Small, consistent steps will make for big progress in the long run. Can you imagine what your Japanese would be like even if you only studied and did this to one page per day? In a year you’d know a lot of words, become much more familiar with grammar, and be able to read a lot more. Most people sit around doing nothing for a year. This kind of study really does make a difference as long as you do it every day. Plus, it will get faster and faster (or you’ll be able to study more and more) as you get better at it.

Verdict

While it does have its flaws, this is a pretty nice way to study. It certainly beats studying with a physical book (in my opinion), and it is bound to get better (I hope). Literally all I want is a desktop / browser version to be compatible with the Japanese language books. If that exists and you can copy paste words I will be a happy little boy. For now, I can see past the problems and still get a lot out of it.

Also, getting this on other Kindle stores would be nice too. Not everyone is in the USA, though I imagine like many other things it will eventually make its way onto other Kindle Stores as well (at least we can dream).

If you’re a high-intermediate or advanced learner of Japanese, I highly recommend giving this a shot. If you’re more on the beginner side of things and know less than… oh, let’s say 750-1000 kanji at the moment, keep studying your kanji until you’re ready. I hear WaniKani is sending out invites more speedily now (wink wink nudge nudge).

Now go check out the Japanese books on the Amazon US Kindle Store.

So, kanji hates women. Sure. But, perhaps the kanji-creators of old were victims of their very misogynistic time. I can’t say that sexism and misogyny in kanji is “right,” but I can see how it ended up happening. Want to see for yourself?

Kanji Made By Men, For Men

Nowadays a lot of these kanji are just words. It’s kind of like how the English word “Woman” has the word “Man” in it. Most people don’t actually care about it that much. That being said, I went through a lot of kanji today in order to bring you this ultimate list of misogynistic kanji. They will surely be a bit controversial, so please don’t get angry (aka “woman slave heart”), noisy (aka “woman woman woman”) or hateful (aka “woman concurrently”) at me. I didn’t create these kanji, and the people who did are long dead, probably because of their recklessness (aka “dead woman”).

女: Woman

This kanji isn’t particularly interesting on its own, but it’s important to look at first, because it always plays a role in the misogynistic kanji to come, appearing over and over again. Although I’m not putting every 女 kanji in this list (there’s a lot of them), I would like to tell you about a pattern I noticed: Kanji that have 女 in them tend to be about something negative, about getting married, about being a female of some kind (daughter, niece, etc) or about looking pretty. Already a bad start, I’d say. Let’s see what those sexist Chinese monks came up with.

奴: Manservant, Slave

This kanji consists of a woman (女) and the “again” radical (又). I suppose when you’re a woman again, you’re a slave (man or lady). It’s like a demotion to a slave level, aka the level of women. Strangely, this kanji’s meaning also extends to the words “dude” or “guy.” Now we know why it has a slight derogatory meaning.

妄: Reckless, Delusion

This kanji is made of “dying” (亡) and woman (女). So, when women who die are being reckless and delusional. They need to be safe and calm so that they can take care of the children. Much better to keep them safe in the house, right? Right? *segue!!*

安: Cheap, Contented, Relax, Safe

This is a woman inside of a roof. A woman safe inside the house. When a woman is safe within a house, she costs a lot less and you (the man) can go out and do your manly things while feeling relaxed and contented that there’ll always be a meal ready for you when you get home.

好: Pleasing, Like

While she’s at home being safe, it’s good if the woman (女) has a child (子). Us men like (好) this. It helps us to feel 安 that you won’t go out and do anything 妄.

奸: Mischief, Rudeness

I’m not sure I can bring myself to believe that the parts of this kanji mean what I think they might mean… but I guess I can’t put it past a couple of horny old monks whose job it is to come up with new kanji. This is a “dry woman” … I’ll let you come up with your own interpretation on why a “dry woman” would cause mischief and/or be rude.

妓: Geisha, Prostitute

This kanji is woman (女) plus support (支). A “support woman” is, apparently, a prostitute. So, thank you prostitutes. Thank you for all your support, support women.

妬: Envy, Jealous

The kanji for woman (女) and stone (石) combined into one. Perhaps this means a “strong woman?” Ha! No, of course not. “Stone woman” instead means “envy” or “jealousy.” Stay away from them stone women.

姓: Surname

Woman (女) and life (生) combine together to mean “surname.” Since women don’t get to carry on their surname (that’s the family name), it becomes apparent that this kanji is suggesting that a woman’s life is to the surname of her husband. She’s kind of a lifelong 奴 (servant) to the surname, if you will, whether it’s her father’s or her husband’s.

孥: Slave, Servant, Wife And Children

You remember slave right? Now it’s a slave (奴) to the child (子). This still means “slave” or “servant,” but a third meaning has been added in to this kanjis as well: “Wife and Children.” So, a woman is a slave to her child. When you think about the relationship between Asian moms and their children, this kanji actually starts to make sense…

帑: Money Repository

Your lady slave (奴) now has a cloth (巾). This is your money repository. At best, this could mean a safe place to store your money (Japanese wives traditionally take care of all the money stuff at home). At worst this could mean your lady is super expensive, and she’s like a black hole where your yen never sees the light of day again once it gets past the event horizon of her money bag. I’ll let you decide this one.

姑: Mother-In-Law

In Asian dramas, the mother-in-law is almost always an evil hag (don’t worry, sometimes they come around after the protagonist good-for-nothing son-in-law does something right). In this kanji, it’s not quite that bad, though. This is a woman (女) plus “old” (古). Just an “old woman”… though you’d think they could have come up with something a little nicer. I don’t think mother-in-laws like being called “old women.” I’m pretty sure the creator of this kanji had a mother-in-law he didn’t really like…

怒: Angry

A slave lady (奴) plus a heart (心). Obviously the men weren’t totally clueless. They could tell the ladies get pretty angry when you treat them like slaves.

姻: Marry, Matrimony

Speaking of slavery, when you combine the kanji for woman (女) and “be associated with” (因) you get a word that means marriage. My theory is that someone wanted to use 囚 (captured) instead 因, but then the wife saw so he got in trouble and then had to switch it to 因. Anyways, marriage is “being associated with a woman.”

姦: Noisy, Wicked, Rape

Not one woman. Not two women. No. There are three women. What happens when you have three women together? They get really noisy. C’mon ladies.

Secondly, this kanji means “wicked” too. I guess when a few women get together, it’s time to get suspicious of their actions?

Lastly, this kanji also means rape too… which is absolutely terrible and probably makes this the worst kanji of all time. Seriously, though. There were some sick kanji-creators out there.

倭: Yamato People (Submissive People)

I wrote about the naming of the Yamato People (Japanese people) a while back. Basically, China used this kanji to name the Japanese a long time ago. It pretty much means “submissive ladylike dwarf people,” though you’ll have to read the whole history to find out why.

恕: Excuse

What’s in a woman’s (女) mouth’s (口) heart (心)? It’s to make excuses. The true words that come from a woman’s heart are just excuses. “So that’s why dinner isn’t ready, Natsumi??? What a terrible ‘woman’s mouth heart!’” Really kanji? C’mon.

案: Expectation, Suggestion, Worry

You have a woman in her house (安) standing on top of a tree (木) looking down on everyone telling them their suggestions and worries. Sounds familiar? This is basically the kanji for “helicopter mother,” if you ask me. They just didn’t have helicopters back then, so she’s standing on a tree instead.

娶: Arrange A Marriage

You’re taking (取) a woman (女). Could be worse, I suppose. Still, you don’t see anyone “taking a man” instead. It’s always the ladies that get the short end of the stick when it comes to kanji.

婬: Lewdness

The woman (女) is clawing (爪) the king (王). Perhaps this is talking about all those misbehaving queens that you hear about in stories. No good comes from nasty queens in folklore stories, Japanese or Chinese. I suppose this is why this kanji means “lewdness.”

嫌: Hate

When you have a woman (女) concurrently (兼) with anything (apparently), you get hate. It’s a mystery as to what you can have at the same time as a woman that will make this hate, but I’m sure someone had something in mind way back in the day.

嫉: Envy, Jealous

Wow, another kanji that means “envy” or “jealous.” Instead of being a stone lady (妬), this time it’s just a “rapid lady” (女=woman, 疾=rapidly). I’m guessing this is suggesting that women get envious or jealous very quickly… sounds like every jdrama / kdrama / cdrama I’ve ever seen.

楼: Watchtower

This kanji has a woman (女) carrying rice (米) on her back. There’s a tree (木) there too, which I’m guessing is the watchtower. I’m thinking you can guess who is in the watchtower by now, right?

媼: Grandma

This woman (女) has captured (囚) someone with a plate (皿). Perhaps this is a relatively nice kanji, actually. Maybe grandma’s cooking is so good that she’s captured you. Good ol’ grandma’s cooking! All she’s good for is cooking now, though. Too old to carry rice around the fields under the watchful watchtower eye of the man.

嫐: Flirt

Two ladies (女), one dude between them (男). Why not add three or four more ladies while you’re at it, wishful-thinking-monk?

嬲: Ridicule, Tease

So, when there are two guys (男) around one lady (女) it’s no longer flirting. Now it’s ridiculing and teasing… at least they got the “apparently most guys were jerks during the kanji-creation period” thing down right in this kanji.

餒: Hunger, Spoil

When a woman (女) has clawed (爪) at the food (食), everyone hungers and/or the food spoils. Sure, blame the food problems on the ladies.

孀: Widow

The women (女) who rain (雨) on each other (相) are the widows. I suppose they’re just crying so much that their really nice husbands have died in battle… or, perhaps they’re crying buckets of joy because apparently every man alive during this time was a complete jerk. I’ll let you decide.

男: Man

Now it’s high time to look at “man” (because, men are #1 in the kanji world, duh!). This kanji consists of a rice paddy (田) and power (力). Who’s the power on the rice field? That’s the dudes, of course. Look at our big muscles. *flex flex*

勇: Courage

Courage consists of the kanji for man (男) and the マ radical, which is an obsolete radical that means “person.” Basically, the kanji for “courage” is “person that is a man.” Because, uh, we’re not afraid of anything… that’s right. We’re MAN PEOPLE.

金玉: Testicles

Golden (金) balls (玉). That’s what testicles are made out of. GOLD. I guess a dude’s reproductive organs are so valuable that they’re being compared to a very expensive metal. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a “Cash For Balls” program going on during the Meiji Era. As everyone’s favorite super villain loved to say: “I like… teeeesticles gooooolllld.”

There’s not as many interesting kanji that have to do with dudes (especially when you compare it with 女), but even with just these two you can see the difference in how they’re treated. Generally, men-related kanji are awesome (or neutral), and women get the shaft. It’s obvious who was coming up with these kanji, though you’d think they’d actually try a little bit more… then again, maybe not.

What Dogs We Were!

I imagine that almost every language has plenty of examples of sexism (prolly against the ladies… sorry ladies!) in them, just because things weren’t particularly fair thousands of years ago when languages and writing were developing. Japanese / Chinese just so happens to have an extremely easy way to look up the etymology of the kanji, making it easy to pick all these out and lay them out for you, probably making it seem worse than it actually is (at least when comparing with other languages out there).

But, like most languages, these words have been around a long time. Now they’re just words, and their original misogynistic meaning is very diluted and unimportant, meaning you’re not a horrible person if you use the word 安い (cheap) in your day-to-day life.

Besides how terrible some of the meanings of these kanji are, I’m also hoping you can take away something else. See how easy it is to figure out the meanings of kanji by breaking them up into radicals? I just looked up one radical (女), and was able to find out so much about how ancient China / Japan thought about women. You could do similar research on other radicals/kanji, for example 田 (rice paddy), 中 (middle) or 力 (power). There’s a lot that can be learned about via kanji radicals – they’re not only a tool for remembering and learning kanji (which is what we’re doing with our work on WaniKani). They give you a peek into the culture and history of China / Japanese as well.

So, I hope you learned something other than “getting three women together means ‘noisy’ in Japanese.” Are any of these your particular favorite? Does something make you “a slave woman’s heart”? No “woman mouth hearts” not to speak up and get “triple woman” if there’s something you want to say in the comments. Oh, but please be nice and don’t “two guys around one girl” anyone. That’s just “a woman clawing at a king” if you ask me. I “woman with a child” nice comments.

On TextFugu, I recently rewrote and improved the “reading and writing hiragana” chapter (feel free to check it out, it’s free), improving it a lot. The idea was to create a step by step process that anybody could use to learn hiragana so that they could move on to the “good stuff.” There were a few goals with this:

1. Make learning hiragana simpler.
2. Create a step-by-step process that anybody could follow.
3. Take the “mystery” out of learning hiragana (especially hard for self-learners).

After coming up with everything and writing it down, I thought it would be useful for readers of Tofugu as well, so I’m posting up a slightly modified hiragana how-to guide for all of you to enjoy as well. If you’re just starting to learn Japanese, or haven’t started yet, this is one of the first things you want to do. There’s no better time than now, right?

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Before You Get Started

For this guide, I’ll be combining several resources. The idea is to take from the best and ignore the rest, organizing for you a great set of resources that will help you to learn how to read and write hiragana (and ultimately allow you to learn Japanese). Before you get started, there are a few preliminary steps I think you should take. They’re optional, technically, but they’ll really help you learn hiragana a lot more effectively and quickly, in the long run.

1. Read about the various Japanese alphabets.

If you knew there was more than one Japanese “alphabet” (okay, fine, they aren’t technically alphabets, but that doesn’t matter much), then maybe you can skip this step. If you didn’t know this, then you should do some reading so that you understand more about what it is you’re about to learn. If you don’t do this, it would be like learning the English alphabet without knowing the letters spell words. With so many Japanese “alphabets” this reading is pretty important.

There’s two ways you can do this:

1. Read some really in depth articles about hiragana, katakana, kanji, and romaji on wikipedia (this is the more complicated option).
2. Read about the Japanese “alphabets” on TextFugu (simpler, quicker, but not as in depth).

I don’t know which one you want to do, but to be honest either is probably fine. Personally, I’d go with the simpler one (#2), just because you only need to know some background info, not become a PhD in Japanese linguistics.

After you’ve gotten the background info on the various Japanese writing systems, you can move on to the next step.

2. Learn The Pronunciation

For me, I think learning pronunciation and understanding how the “patterns” of hiragana work are important to do before you learn to read and write. If you spend some time on this first, you can then associate this with the reading and writing that you learn a little later. Learning the pronunciation of hiragana before you learn hiragana will help you build a foundation of better Japanese pronunciation, help you to understand how the Japanese language works, and ultimately speed up your hiragana learning in the long run (I think it will, anyways).

1. Hiragana pronunciation can be looked at on TextFugu as well (another free chapter)

After you’ve gone through this, you’ll be ready to start learning the reading and writing parts of hiragana.

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The Hiragana How-To Guide

Before you start, I want you to think back to your days of when you learned how to read/write own native language. This will help you to readjust any unrealistic expectations. Most likely, it took you years to get comfortable with English (or whatever you grew up with). Despite this, you’re going to be able to learn hiragana much faster. It’s going to be hard, and you should expect to be perfect in one, two, or even three weeks. It’s a process, and the more you practice the better you’ll end up getting at it, just like anything (as long as you practice the right things, whoops).

1. Download A Hiragana Chart

I’ve actually made a hiragana chart that you can download right here. I think it’s pretty simple, printable, and easy to use. Feel free to use it, give it away, or whatever else you want to do with it. It’s a totally free hiragana chart.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.tofugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hiragana-chart.pdf"]Download Hiragana Chart[/ilink]

You’re going to be using this a lot, so print it out (if you have a printer) and make it handy.

2. Let’s Take A Look At Some Words You Know Already

Despite what you might think, reading and writing Japanese (at least when it comes to kana) is actually really easy. In order to illustrate that, I thought we could look at some words you already know, starting with the word “sushi.”

For the most part, all hiragana characters (or kana) consist of a consonant (a letter that’s not a vowel) and a vowel. If you look at your hiragana chart, you’ll see that there are things like “ka, chi, mu, ra, hu, ji” etc. Although there are some “weird” ones, like “shi, chi, tsu” etc., that are two consonants plus a vowel, you can probably see the basic pattern emerge. Other than this, the only exceptions are “n” (a single consonant) and “a, i, u, e, o” (which are just vowels on their own).

So, knowing that kana pretty much consists of a consonant sound and a vowel sound, let’s figure out how to spell “sushi” in hiragana. It’s quite easy.

The word “sushi” consists of two separate kana: SU + SHI. Take a look at your hiragana chart and see if you can find the kana for both of these (su & shi). What are they? Just for the sake of letting things sink it, go ahead and copy the characters “su” and “shi” in order to write the word “sushi” out. All you have to do is copy them off the chart, we’ll be really learning them in a bit.

This image is taken from the hiragana chart we’re using, and I’ve circled the correct characters. Now, on the sheet they aren’t in the correct order, but when you write out す (su) and し (shi) together, you get すし (sushi). Writing in hiragana really is that simple. It’s amazing, right?

Now, unfortunately, there is a kanji for this word as well (寿司 = すし = sushi), but you don’t need to worry about that at all right now. We’re focusing on hiragana for the time being. Let’s take a look at another word, karate.

This word is often mispronounced as “karadee,” but if you use your knew found knowledge of hiragana pronunciation you’ll realize how karate is actually pronounced. Let’s write it out in kana.

Take the word “karate” and break it up into its individual kana parts (I’ll give you a hint, there’s three parts). Find those three kana on your hiragana chart and write the word out. Pronounce the three individual kana to find out the correct pronunciation of the word karate. Did you get it right?

When you write “karate” out in hiragana, it comes out to からて. This is the hiragana for KA + RA + TE. Totally different from “karadee” that most people end up saying everywhere else.

After taking a look at these, are you starting to understand how hiragana is used to write things in Japanese? Do you also understand how kana in hiragana are pronounced (consonant + vowel, etc)? Good, let’s move on to the actual process of learning to read and write hiragana.

3. Learning to Read & Write

Before you get started, you should make sure that you have a Smart.fm account. This is what we’re going to use to drill the individual kana to help you learn them. We’ll be using it quite a bit in this guide, so it’s best you get an account now so you’re ready.

First 10 Hiragana: あいうえ、おかきくけこ

1. Study your first ten hiragana using Smart.fm – あ、い、う、え、お、か、き、く、け、こ. You’ll have an option of studying these either 5 at a time or 10 at at time. I’d recommend choosing 5 for now, until you get better. Here’s a quick screencast going over how you should use Smart.fm to study your hiragana.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7keQJIpJXZE']

Essentially, you want to…

1. Write the kana down every time you get it right (or wrong)
2. Use the pronunciation audio that’s available to you on Smart.fm
3. Only study 5 at a time
4. Let Smart.fm tell you when you’ve learned something (usually it’s pretty good at that)

2. Go to Drag n’ Drop Hiragana, and only drag the first ten hiragana (a-column and ka-column) into the right spaces. By only doing these ones, you’ll have to find the right hiragana amongst all the other hirgana (helping you differentiate them) and secondly force you to remember what they look like. Try this twice (refresh to restart) and see if you can do it faster the second time!

3. After you feel good about the first 10 kana on Smart.fm, it’s time to put some of that into practice. Complete this worksheet and try to cheat as little as possible.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hiragana-1-10.pdf"]First 10 Hiragana Practice[/ilink]

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Hiragana 11-20: さしすせそ、たちつてと

Of course, it’s important that you review the kana you just studied while you’re learning your new kana, so we’ll make sure to do that here.

1. Start by writing out the ten kana that you know and try to do it from memory (starting with あ and ending with こ). If you had to peek it’s not the end of the world. Write out the romaji next to / below / above them for reference.

2. Now write out the ten new kana (sa-column and ta-column) along with the romaji. These are the kana you’re about to study.

3. Go ahead and open the Smart.fm Master Hiragana list again. Since you finished the first 10 kana on there, you should be able to do the next ten now. Do them in groups of five, just like before until you’ve completed up until と (to). Remember to follow the steps from before where you write out the kana each time you get it right or wrong.

4. Visit RealKana and check the four columns of hiragana that you know already. Click on the katakana tab and uncheck anything that’s checked (you don’t want to learn katakana yet). Now, hit the practice tab and go through the practice a few times, until you feel good about reading the kana.

5. After you feel fairly decent about the first twenty kana (especially the new stuff) complete this worksheet to really solidify that knowledge.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hiragana-11-20.pdf"]First 20 Hiragana Practice[/ilink]

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Hiragana 21-30: なにぬねの、はひふへほ

You’re actually past the halfway point for the “main” hiragana now! Just keep going, you’re making good progress!

1. Write down your ten new hiragana on your piece of paper with the other hiragana, so you can have them for reference.

2. Log on to Smart.fm, and complete the next ten hiragana (na-column and ha-column). As always, be sure to write down the individual kana every time you get it right or wrong, so you can practice writing. If you need help with stroke order, you can always use the stroke order guide on the hiragana chart page.

3. After feeling okay about the next ten, complete this work sheet, which helps you practice reading and writing the individual kana.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hiragana-21-30.pdf"]First 30 Hiragana Practice[/ilink]

4. Visit RealKana and check the four columns of hiragana that you know already. Click on the katakana tab and uncheck anything that’s checked (you don’t want to learn katakana yet). Now, hit the practice tab and go through the practice a few times, until you feel good about reading this kana (you should be pretty good, actually!).

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Hiragana 31-46: まみむめも、やゆよ、らりるれろ、わを、ん

You’re almost there! In terms of the “main” hiragana, this is the last of it. After this, you’re just learning things you already kind of know (like dakuten and combo hiragana), which means you’re pretty much all the way there. Just a few loose ends to tie up after this.

1. Write down your new hiragana on your piece of paper, along with the romaji, for reference.

2. Log on to Smart.fm and finish out the hiragana until ん (n). There’s more than this on Smart.fm, but that’ll come soon enough. Make sure you’re writing down the hiragana you get both right and wrong. Once you’ve finished it up until ん, move on to the next step.

3. Go to RealKana, and this time only check columns な, は, ま, や, ら, & ん. You’re learning more this round, so I want you to focus it a little more on recent kana. Here’s an image to show you what to check (make sure you uncheck the katakana columns in the katakana tab too, if you need to).

Go through these a couple of times until you feel comfortable with them.

4. Complete this worksheet, which focuses on ま through ん columns.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hiragana-ma-n.pdf"]Hiragana ま – ん[/ilink]

5. Head on back to Drag n’ Drop Hiragana. In theory, you should be able to complete the puzzle now (rather than just little bits of it). How fast can you get it done? Record your times and see if you can get done in under three minutes.

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Dakuten: がぎぐげご、ざじずぜぞ、だぢづでど、ばびぶべぼ、ぱぴぷぺぽ

In theory, these should be easier than what we’ve been doing so far. You already know the main characters (which dakuten use) and all you have to do is know what little symbol to put next to them (hint: usually it’s a quotation mark). That being said, I’m going to give you more things than normal to study in this section. You should be better at studying hiragana by now, and you should also know the symbols above (minus the dakuten part). I won’t say this section is easy, but it should be easier.

1. Start up Smart.fm and work through the dakuten hiragana. You should finish on ぽ (po). As always, keep writing these things out as you do them whether you get a card right or wrong.

2. Complete this worksheet. This worksheet’s goal is to help you remember what a column will change to when dakuten are added to it. Focus more on remembering that “S” goes to “Z” or “T” goes to “D” rather than focusing on individual kana.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/dakuten.pdf"]Dakuten Practice[/ilink]

3. On RealKana, let’s practice dakuten hiragana as well as the original kana from which the dakuten came. Check the か, さ, た, は, が, ざ, だ, ば, & ぱ columns. Here’s an image to illustrate:

Make sure you uncheck any katakana columns that might be checked as well. Go through the drills like this until you feel pretty comfortable telling them apart. Can you write them out on your own now? If I said things like…

What do “K-sounds” turn into?

Answer: “G-Sounds”

What do “H-sounds” turn into (two answers here)

Answer: “B & P Sounds”

What do “D-sounds” turn back into?

Answer: “T-Sounds”

What do “Z-sounds” turn back into?

Answer: “S-Sounds”

Could you answer all these questions? If not, be sure to drill RealKana a little bit more so you can learn the differences. Really, just learning these differences is the secret to learning dakuten, so if you can do that, you can do dakuten :)

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Combination Hiragana: きゃ、しゃ、ちゃ、にゃ、ひゃ、みゃ、りゃ、ぎゃ、じゃ、ぢゃ、びゃ、&　ぴゃ Columns

Sometimes, certain kana can be written smaller. When placed next to another kana, it can modify the way it sounds. Don’t worry, though, because the modifications actually make a lot of sense. For example:

き + small ゃ = きゃ (which sounds like kya). It’s almost like saying KIYA, but you drop the “i” sound. KYA!

There are other “combo-hiragana,” but these are the main ones, and the most important for you to know right now. Combo-kana will get a little crazier once we hit katakana, but for now it should be fairly straight forward, especially after you drill them for a bit.

1. Fire up your good buddy Smart.fm again. By now, you should be through the dakuten, and ready to study the combo-hiragana, starting with きゃ, きゅ, and きょ. Since you already know all the characters being used (you just have to remember that the y-column kana are “small”) feel free to study ten at a time. The goal is to get to the end of this list, actually and finish out everything that Smart.fm has to offer. Like I said, though, these should be one of the easiest sets (even though its the longest) for you, and drilling through it should be more about reviewing kana you already know.

2. Let’s practice writing them. Remember, the やゆよ for these are small ゃゅょ. If you don’t write them small, they are just regular sized, and pronounced normally. It’s the difference between:

きや (kiya)　vs　きゃ (kya)

Those are two different sounds and you can’t switch them out with each other. The difference is important! Use this worksheet to practice:

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.textfugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/combo-hiragana.pdf"]Combination Hiragana[/ilink]

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At this point, you should feel fairly good about almost all the hiragana. You don’t need to be perfect, nor do you need to be at 100%. That’s definitely not expected at this point. It’ll take a while before you read hiragana nice and fluidly, but luckily there’s going to be plenty of opportunity to practice as you continue to study Japanese (now in hiragana!). Well done!

Where To Go From Here?

Well, there’s plenty of things to do, but I’d round out your hiragana reading & writing career with some lessons on hiragana’s long vowels and the small tsu. That right there will make sure you know just about everything you need to know about hiragana, then all that’s left is more practice.

By learning hiragana, though, you’ve opened up a ton of new resources from which you can study Japanese. If you don’t know hiragana, you’re really limited in what you can do. If you do learn it (like you just did, in theory), there’s so much more available to you now, whether it’s various Japanese textbooks, blogs, websites, or whatever. Hiragana will open doors for you.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and I hope you found it useful as well. If you’re thinking of learning Japanese, this isn’t a bad place to start, and I think this guide lays everything out pretty simply and easily. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

P.S. If you wish this tutorial was 140 characters or less, you should follow Tofugu on Twitter.

P.P.S. If you want to read a more in depth guide to learning hiragana, you’ll want to check out the first six chapters of TextFugu (all are free).

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