This is a companion activity to accompany the 「ぎゃぎゅぎょ」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! We’re your personal guides to Japanese language and culture, Kiki and Koko! As a student or curious dabbler of Japanese language, we know that not everyone has the ability to immerse themselves totally in order to attempt to learn. (And, one day in future, we’ll discuss our thoughts on immersion when it comes to the Japonic language branch.) But, in lieu of travelling to Japan and randomly picking up words here and thereーwhich can end up with what English-speaking internet-dwellers may refer to as bone apple tea, (a miscribed version of the French phrase: Bon Appétit), otherwise known as a scenarios in which speakers may have never seen a word spelt out or never heard it clearly saidーwe’re here to assist you in a more focused way. Passive learning can be useful, but it can be overwhelming if it’s not properly focussed. And, you should be spending your precious revision/studying time actually revising/studying. That’s why we’ve compiled a quick collection of vocabulary in the form of simple digital flashcards! You can practise your reading and writing あ～ぎょ, focussing on the latest characters to the earliest characters and everything in between without having to scrub through the internet yourself. So, just relax and focus on

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

Perhaps, though, this could be your first encounter with writing hiragana! Or, just as likely, you’re here, but you also need a refresher on the previous characters. Because when you’re practising new ones, again, it’s important to keep the previous ones fresh in your mind in order to be sure you maintain until it becomes second nature and you can access the information at will. But, it’s also easy to let oneself slip into bad habits once one becomes very comfortable with writing. That’s why it’s important to take a look back at the stroke orders for the other characters we’ll be showing, as well. There’s always an improvement to be had with handwriting, and it never hurts to improve your handwriting! Well…unless you write a lot… Be sure to be safe when you’re encoding these into your muscle memory, keeping good writing habits, especially if you’re someone already taking notes for other classes or everyday use. You can always use a touchscreen or a whiteboard if you ever get in a pinch with tired hands. It usually is a bit of a rest with less pressure than a traditional pen or pencil, that way you can still fulfill your revision needs when your hands ever need a rest. But, we understand, it doesn’t always have that same satisfying texture. If you’re finding yourself buried in piles of practice paper, you can always try to keep it to one notebook.

Support your kinaesthetic learning along with even more Japanese language and culture lessons in new and more extravagant formats with this notebookand more with this design available atieindigoeast.redbubble.com

Obviously, any paper or thing you can write on will do, but it’s just kind of neat to have all of your practice and progress in one neat tidy area. Anyway! As we mentioned, this is a good opportunity to practise previous characters, even if only from the same previous group as well as follow our steps to getting the most out of your study session, which we outline in the main writing lesson. If you need a bit more assistance on the main character blends we’re practising, those are there for you as well.

Get the most out of your session:

As you write these, we recommend you take the usual steps we mention in the writing section along with a few others in order to get the most out of your study sessions:

• Open up the reading lesson on a different device or in a different window
• Play QUIZBO™’s soundbyte of that specific character (or blend)
• Repeat after QUIZBO™, pronouncing it aloud
• Write the character (or blend) using the stroke order
• Say the character (or blend) aloud once more
• Listen to QUIZBO™’s pronunciation once more to make sure you have it correct

brought to you by 「ぎゃぎゅぎょ」, 「がぎぐげご」、「やゆよ」, and 五十音順

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 【ぎゃぎゅぎょ】. 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【ぎゃぎゅぎょ】!

Stick around for more Kiki+Koko: Let’s NihonGO!! Online, after these messages!

Wow, interesting stuff. Now, back to Kiki+Koko: Let’s NihonGO!! 

Ready? Let’s NihonGO!!

As a reminder, these are just a few vocabulary words. Knowing hiragana from あ through ぎょ 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 「ぎゃ、ぎゅ、ぎょ」 vs 「ぎや、ぎゆ、ぎよ」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.

Whether or not you’re a beginner doesn’t mean you have to stick to basic vocabulary. Make your studies fun and reach further by using today’s vocabulary to create difference sentences and maybe even stories! Connecting these vocabulary and characters with concepts can be wildly beneficial. But, if that’s not a path that works best for you, then just focus on the basics: Did you have a difficult time differentiating between 拗音, youon, and 五十音、gojuuon? Did you recognise some of the previous 拗音, youon, used again? Do you feel a bit more skilled after this? Whether it was difficult or a breeze, we hope that this enriched your Japanese language learning experience. It can be a bit of a pain to search for focused vocabulary based on the characters you’re studying and only including ones that you’ve encountered before. That’s why we hope this will help you to just focus on the activity, writing, and again, possibly some composition if you’re overachieving. Just give it your best, and you can return any time to practise reading and writing as long as you wish!

Remember, we’re always adding new explanations and hopefully helpful lessons about grammar and vocabulary 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 onto 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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Thank you for joining us! We hope that you continue with us on this adventure, and we appreciate that you’ve chosen us to assist you on your Japanese learning journey.

Stay Safe!!
♡Kiki+Koko

     
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