On this slide we see the more common characters from the hiragana (left) and katakana (right) syllabaries arranged in traditional order. A character in the same location in each table is pronounced exactly the same.

With the exception of the vowels on the top line and the letter ‘n’, all of the symbols represent a consonant followed by a vowel.

Voiced consonants are indicated by attaching a dakuten mark to the unvoiced shape. The ‘p’ sound is indicated by the use of a han-dakuten (compare glyphs for ‘ha’, ‘ba’, and ‘pa’).

A small ‘tsu’ (っ) is commonly used to lengthen a consonant sound.

Small versions of や, ゆ, and よ are used to form syllables such as ‘kya’ (きゃ), ‘kyu’ (きゅ), and ‘kyo’ (きょ) respectively.

When writing katakana the mark ー is used to indicate a lengthened vowel.