Learn to Read Japanese Fast

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Read Japanese Fast

Learn the Japanese alphabet and start reading characters today

Japanese writing can look difficult at first. But reading Japanese begins with two small phonetic alphabets that have only a few dozen characters. Each character represents a syllable — a small sound such as ka, mi, to, or ne. Words are created by combining these sounds in order. Once the characters become familiar to you, Japanese writing starts to feel clear and readable.

For example, メ represents the sound me and モ represents mo. When they appear together — メモ — the sounds combine as me-mo, which reads “memo”.

The first alphabet you learn is Hiragana, the rounded set of characters used throughout everyday Japanese writing. The second alphabet, Katakana has sharper shapes and is used for foreign words, names, and many modern loanwords.

Each character is presented with audio so you can hear the sound it represents. Practice questions help you recognize characters and remember their sounds quickly.

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