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VSGs

In covering all the Hiragana, we talked about 15 sound groups. Do you remember them all?

  1. The Vowel Group
  2. The K Sound Group
  3. The S Sound Group
  4. The T Sound Group
  5. The N Sound Group
  6. The H Sound Group
  7. The M Sound Group
  8. The Y Sound Group
  9. The R Sound Group
  10. The W Sound Group
  11. The G Sound Group
  12. The Z Sound Group
  13. The D Sound Group
  14. The B Sound Group
  15. The P Sound Group

As it turns out, that is just 1 way to group the Hiragana characters. In this post, I’d like to talk about a different way to group the Hiragana characters and how it will help you in the future.

What Do They Have in Common?

Take a look at the following 15 characters:

You’ll notice that all these characters end in the same vowel sound. I’m going to call these characters “the あ VSG” where VSG stands for vowel sound group. Because there are only 5 vowels in Japanese, there will only be 5 VSGs.

The Importance of VSGs

When you are first learning Hiragana, it’s convenient to learn them in terms of the 15 sound groups that we looked at. However there will be times where looking at certain VSGs will be very, VERY helpful.

Yō-on, Long Vowel Sounds, Verbs (Dictionary Forms and Adapters)

In fact, in the next post, you’ll see how “the い VSG” share a very important common property!

Conclusion

The 5 VSGs are あ、い、う、え and お. In the next post we’ll start using this way of grouping Hiragana to explain the last set of Hiragana characters! Stay tuned!

Rice & Peace! 👋🏾

-AL