Hello everyone. It’s been a while and I’m sorry about that. I don’t think I can tend to this blog as often as I’d like. Anyways, in the last lesson you learned the さ series and took a test! How did you do? Were there certain characters that gave you a more difficult time? Maybe certain typefaces were trickier than others? It’s important that you work on those characters. The trickier typefaces will come with practice. Don’t worry if you got a really bad score, keep at it!

Alright, this next series has two deviant mora. This series doesn’t have ti or tu, instead it has chi and tsu. The first one, chi, is pronounced like ch + い. The second one is a bit trickier. Think of a word with ‘ts’ at the end, like hats or cats. The sound at the end of these words is what you want to use, so ts + う. Try saying hatsu or catsu a few times and then remove the ha or ca.

た ta

This kana looks like the letters ‘t’ and ‘a’, which is just how it sounds: ta.

ち chi

Be careful not to confuse this with さ！There’s also another character which is similar to this that you’ll learn later on. This character is NOT a 5, it only looks like it; the lines at the top left should cross! The Japanese classical elements are 地 chi Earth, 水 mizu Water, 火 hi Fire, 風 kaze Wind, and 空 sora Void. The first of these 5 elements sounds like this kana: chi, meaning Earth. 5 elements for a kana that looks like 5.