Hiragana

Hiragana is curvilinear and is used to write certain Japanese words, such as particles (wa, ga, ni), conjunctions, certain nouns and so on. Hiragana suffixes are also used with kanji stems to form verbs and adjectives.

They are an essential part of the Japanese written language and, seeing as there's only 46 basic hiragana, most written with only two or three strokes, it's a good idea to get them under your belt before embarking on the kanji.

	A	I	U	E	O
A
K
S
T
N
H
M
Y
R
W

The character listed as wu on the chart is actual pronounced and romanized as n. Si, ti, tu, and hu are all pronounced and romanized as shi, chi, tsu, and fu respectively. The above hiragana characters are all called the unvoiced characters. They are called this because the sounds resonate in a spot in your throat that isn't very far down. There are more characters that are called the voiced characters. These resonate in a spot that's deeper down. To make these characters, you simply add 2 little lines or a circle to the characters from above. Ks then becomes Gs, Ss becomes Zs, Ts become Ds, and Hs become Bs or Ps.

	A	I	U	E	O
G
Z
D
B
P

In this chart, both zi and di are actually ji and d is usually written as zu, although it is sometimes romanized as dzu.