Lesson 2 - Hiragana: Character A

2.1 Character A in the Japanese Hiragana alphabet
The English characters A and a are represented
by a single Hiragana character in Japanese.

My illustration above exemplifies the fact that big
or small characters (lower case or capital letters)
in the western alphabet become only one character
when translated into the Japanese Hiragana alphabet.

2.2 In which order to draw the lines?
These are the step-by-step instructions about in
which order the different line strokes are painted.

I have painted these examples by myself, but when you
see written Hiragana in real life then it can differ about
the outlooking of the curved lines. Different people have
different personal writing styles. This is the one I learned.

2.3 How about the direction of each line?
The line stroke direction does matter when writing Hiragana.
I have painted small red arrows to indicate in which direction
to draw in - if you write by hand.

Step 1 begins with a horizontal stroke from the left towards the right.
At the end of the stroke the line leans up slightly.

Step 2 involves drawing a vertical line - beginning from the top.
Continue down and curve off the line slightly towards the right.

Step 3 ends off the Hiragana character by making a curved spiral
looking line which partly intersects with itself during its circular motion.


2.4 One Hiragana character = one western character?
No, that's not always true. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's not.

In the western latin alphabet there is only one character

per sound. The Japanese alphabet system of Hiragana

also has only one Japanese character per sound, but when

that sound is translated into the western alphabet - then the

sound itself may be expressed with more than one western

style character. This current character A is an exception, 

since its Hiragana character is represented by only one

western character. Most of the other Hiragana characters

represent between two and three western characters at once.

2.5 Is there a list of one-western-character Hiragana characters?
Yes, here it is! We will learn each and every of them in this blog.
The exceptions are: a, i, u, e, o and the character n.
Actually the character o exists in two different forms in Hiragana.

2.6 Two different forms of the o-character? For what? When?
One of the two o-characters in Hiragana is only used as a particle
(to express politeness). I will show more about it when we reach to
the o-characters later on.

2.7 How about more than one western character length Hiragana?
We reach to those ones soon as well. Here are some random examples
until then: ka, tsu, me, chi, ne, ho and shi.