How this hiragana practice works
Tick the rows you want to drill, then type the romaji for each kana that appears. A right answer moves on by itself; a wrong one shows the answer, and that kana comes back more often until you get it right several times in a row. Pick the kana turns it around: you see the romaji and choose the kana from four, which is easier on a phone.
The grid under the quiz shows how well you know each character: green once you have it right at least three times with nine answers in ten correct, amber while you are still learning it, red when you miss it more often than not. Practise my weak kana drills only the red and amber ones.
A good order to learn them
- The vowels and the K, S and T rows (あ to と). Learn a row, drill it, then add the next one.
- The N to W rows and ん. Once all 46 basic kana are green, the rest is quick.
- Dakuten and handakuten. Two small strokes (゛) turn か into が, さ into ざ, た into だ and は into ば; a small circle (゜) turns は into ぱ. That gives 25 more sounds from kana you already know.
- Combined sounds. A small ゃ, ゅ or ょ after an i-row kana makes one syllable: き + ゃ is きゃ (kya), し + ゅ is しゅ (shu). The page drills all 33.
- Katakana. Switch the page to Katakana and start again; your hiragana scores are kept.
Romaji spellings that both count
13 kana have more than one romaji spelling, and every one of them is accepted: shi or si for し, chi or ti for ち, tsu or tu for つ, fu or hu for ふ, ji or zi for じ. The answers come from the mozc input method table that the Japanese keyboard on this site uses, so what you practise here is exactly what you type there. The romaji chart lists every spelling.
ん takes n or nn here. When you type real words, use nn before a vowel or y: こんにちは is konnnichiha.
Practise writing too
Print a practice sheet prints the rows you picked, each kana with its romaji and six empty boxes to copy it by hand. Writing a character a few times helps it stick, and reading it back in the quiz shows whether it did.
Next: type Japanese
Once you can read the kana, try writing with them: the Japanese keyboard turns the romaji you type into hiragana or katakana, and its typing practice drills the same rows as kana groups. The online notepad can use the same keyboard for notes in Japanese.
Questions
How many hiragana are there?
46 basic characters. Adding the two marks (゛ and ゜) gives 25 more sounds, and a small ゃ, ゅ or ょ after an i-row kana gives 33 combined sounds, so this page drills 104 in all.
Is it shi or si?
Both are accepted. Shi, chi, tsu and fu are the Hepburn spellings used in textbooks and on signs; si, ti, tu and hu follow the kana rows. Both type the same kana on a Japanese keyboard.
Should I learn hiragana or katakana first?
Hiragana is used for native words and grammar endings, so most courses start with it. Switch this page to Katakana when you are ready; the scores are kept apart.
Are my scores saved?
Yes, in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere, and Reset scores clears them.
Romaji answers: Google mozc romanji-hiragana.tsv (BSD 3-clause), plus the Hepburn ji and zu for ぢ and づ.