In the last lesson we went over あいうえお — the core vowel sounds. The Japanese language consists of simply adding consonants to these core sounds. Let’s start with K first.
This is a very simple lesson, nothing tricky in the K consonant series.
KA KI KU KE KO-かきくけこ
First let’s cover how to pronounce these characters. You can tap each character to hear native pronunciation.
Pronouncing かきくけこ
- か (ka) – sounds like “kah” — “ah” with a k in front
- き (ki) – sounds like “key”
- く (
ku ) – sounds like “koo” - け (
ke ) – sounds like “kay” — like “okay” without the O - こ (ko) – sounds like “koh” –“oh” with a k in front
Look Out For き-さ and け-せ
You haven’t learned a couple of these characters yet, they’re in the next lesson. You can see き (ki) is very similar to さ (sa). It has one more stroke across the top stem.
け (ke) and せ (se) are a little less similar. The catch is when written on signs け almost looks like せ. I like to think け is “facing left” and せ is “facing right.”