This is a companion activity to accompany the 「きゃきゅきょ」writing lessons! Now, you don’t have to compile these vocabulary words on your own as we have you covered with a useful list of vocabulary to help you differentiate 拗音, youon, and 五十音, gojuuon!

こんにちにゃあ！Welcome to Kiki+Koko: Let’s NihonGO!! Online! In the previous lessons, we mentioned a few ways you could practise reading and writing as well as differentiating these characters. This included a method where you differentiate 拗音, youon, from regular 五十音、gojuuon, by way of writing them in succession and in different vocabulary words to compare to keep these ideas concrete. Of course, we could have left you to forage for this practice on your own, but that would bebut that’s why we’re here! We wouldn’t want to have you waste your valuable study time searching around for vocabulary words! Though it’s important to focus on each character at a time, we know it can be much more motivating to have the chance to write full words. And, though the last time, we provided full sentences for you to practise reading, this time, due to this being focused on differentiating and taking a closer look at character size, it seemed best to keep things simple. As your guides to Japanese language and culture, Kiki+Koko, we’re here to give you the essentials you need to survive and thrive.

For the very latest, you can navigate to the 平仮名の筆順 | How to Write Hiragana

But, before we get started, perhaps you’ve already learnt hiragana in full? In such case, you’ll still get quite the added benefit of revising! You’ll either be able to learn some new vocabulary or you’ll be able to practise your stroke order. For those who are caught up to the current lesson included, this is a useful opportunity to polish your stroke order skills. When it comes to learning to write, there always seems to be a bit of a curve. When first learning, it can be difficult to get neat strokes, then once you start to get a bit better, you’ll end up finally achieving a nice look with careful line work. And, sometimes, suddenly, when you become very comfortable with writing, later on in your studies, you’ll find your handwriting becoming not as deliberate and maybe even a bit messy. That’s why it’s important, no matter your level, to practise your stroke order so that you can give yourself a sort of writing health check.

And, again, human minds really seem to like connecting concepts. It’s just sort of how they work! If you connect one idea to another idea, you’ll build a stronger enduring memory of it. That’s why, when kids learn their ABCs, it’s useful to connect it to vocabulary words, writing, and saying them aloud. That’s why A for Asteroid, B for Binary Star, or C is for Comet yields useful results. That’s also why printouts and colouring pages are so useful for children to trace the letters. And, this is also why singing one’s ABCs can assist in connecting them with not only the aural aspects of it, but also connecting it with a melody. And, this hyper focus on each letter along with relating them to similar concepts is what seems to have worked best over the years. And though English is different to Japanese in many ways, the human mind seems to still function in the same way when it comes to acquiring language.

And this brings us to the challenge! You can use this activity to practise reading, writing, and a bit of vocabulary along the way. That’s right, practising three skills at once! You’ll be unstoppable!! This will cover the hiragana from 【あ】through 【きゃきゅきょ】in the gojuuon order. That way, you can focus on the characters you’re already learning, or have learnt, without bogging yourself down with new characters quite yet. If you don’t quite have the stroke order properly memorised, and you’d like to practise writing, you can open a separate tab with our stroke order lessons. We really recommend you use this as an opportunity for writing, and even if you’re confident in your characters, it can be helpful to make sure your handwriting improves. There’s something very fun and impressive about nice handwriting that is timeless and rewarding.

So, we’ve created a 12 word activity to help you recall your hiragana.  In this mini-activity, you basically have digital flashcards. By clicking on each of them, you’ll reveal a kanji (or katakana) version that defines the meaning of the word, and of course, the translation in English. Many words have several homophones, so we’ve just included some common meanings as not to bog your studies down.

No worries, we’ll keep it simple and stick to a few words that use only the hiragana: 【あいうえお】through【きゃきゅきょ】!

Ready? Let’s NihonGO!!

As a reminder, these are just a few vocabulary words. Knowing hiragana from あ through きょ opens up a HUGE amount of words to you! Some are less common then others, but are useful and interesting to help you connect some concepts to your writing, and recognising the characters in new configurations. We hope you get the most that you can out of these digital flashcards~!

[ピント｜Focus]: We’ll be providing you with a focus on 「きゃきゅきょ」 vs 「きや、きゆ、きよ」Be sure when you read and write these to focus on the differences between these very similar characters and their 拗音、youon, counterparts.

Take this! It’s dangerous to go alone.

Whew! How did you do with that focused practice ? Was it challenging to differentiate? Hopefully by seeing, writing, and reading these characters in succession, it’ll point out the similarities in a way that should help you become more attuned to the differences. When there’s something very similar, it’s important to bring it to the forefront so that it won’t take you for surprise in future. And, on top of that, you now have 12 more vocabulary words you can use! As a hint, almost all of these were 名詞, めいし, otherwise known as nouns. You can describe these nouns with 形容詞、けいようし, or adjectives, and even have the nouns do something using 動詞、どうし、verbs! We’re always adding new explanations and helpful lessons about these so you can create proper sentences and express your thoughts in Japanese! (And, if you want the VERY latest, even before we organise the articles into their sections on the site and even before they’re organised on our Pinterest boards, you can go the category: 文法｜Grammar! And, better yet, if you’d like to be sure you have the latest hiragana writing lessons before they’re categorised elsewhere in a prettier way, you can just get the list of the latest to access them quickly in the category: 平仮名の筆順 | How to Write Hiragana. And, with that, we hope we’ve given you all of the resources you need to make the most of your current study time! We’ll continue to add more and more for you as the days and weeks roll on during your Japanese language learning journey!

We hope this is a helpful revision / study tool! But, maybe all of this wasn’t quite clicking if you hadn’t been with us from the very beginning. Feel free to take a look at our Reading and Writing sections to revise / review / study, as it’s essential to learning any language. If you want to make sure your Japanese language survival kit is stocked with the latest tools, you can make sure you stay up to date by subscribing to the Electronic Mailing List of Tomorrow, today, found usually at the bottom of the site page or the sidebar on desktop. You’ll get the latest tools and resources to surviving in Japanese language in straight to your inbox. That’s articles, videos, podcasts, and more!

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Stay Safe!!
♡Kiki+Koko

     
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