Kana characters

Japanese kanji writing is complemented by kana characters. They have no meaning in themselves, but stand for sounds. Every syllable has a corresponding hiragana character, e.g. “か” (ka), and a katakana character, e.g. “γ‚«” (ka).

Hiragana are used to write word conjugations, whereas katakana are used for loanwords such as “γ‚³γƒΌγƒ’γƒΌ” (koohii, coffee).

Kana reading practice

In reading practice, you will learn the kana characters as well as useful Japanese words. For example, in the picture the character す (su) is a part of the word すし (sushi, Japanese rice dish).

As your skills progress, you can move on to answering with full words and hiragana characters at your own pace. In the picture, all of the following answers are correct: su, sushi, す and すし.

Kana writing practice

In writing practice, you will write kana characters yourself by adding the missing character to the words. Below you would add the character す (su) to the word すし (sushi).

Kana character input is done by typing the desired syllable in Latin alphabet. It will then change into a kana character automatically.

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