The Last 3 Sound Groups

Great news everyone: We’ve reached our last set of hiragana characters! よーしゃ！

Let’s get into them.

The い VSG

For a review of what a VSG is, take a look here. In this post we’re going to look at most of the い VSG. We won’t need the い character.

In order to make the last set of sounds we need to combine the 12 characters above with the 3 characters from the Y sound group. Does that sound confusing? Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

The や Sound Group

Notice that we took 12 characters from the い VSG and attached a small や character to them. (For a size comparison, here they are next to each other: やゃ). Most of the time the small や (as expected) adds a “ya” sound to the consonant. The exceptions are しゃ, ちゃ, and じゃ (where the small つ only adds an “a” sound).

Also, I colored ぢゃ in red because you will probably never see it out in the wild, but I added it here for completeness. (And because 12 is a much nicer number than 11, innit?)

The ゆ Sound Group

Likewise, this group combines the 12 characters of the い VSG with the small ゆ character. In the case of しゅ, じゅ, and ちゅ only a “u” sound is added. Again, if there is ever a “ju” sound, it will almost always be じゅ instead of ぢゅ.

The よ Sound Group

Finally we can add a small よ character to the same 12 characters to get the よ sound group.

nyo Or nyo??

Now that we have looked at all of the Hiragana in Japanese, an interesting problem can arise. Let’s say that there is a very kind Japanese person teaching you about the language. He writes the word “onyomi” for you in English. How would you write this in Hiragana??