Japanese Hiragana Combination / Contracted Sounds (Yo-on)

This Japanese for beginners video will teach you how to read and pronounce the Japanese Hiragana characters with small kana (ya yu yo) which create contracted sounds when combined . It includes pronunciation and romaji for each character so that you can practice and learn along!

Combination Hiragana are syllables that are produced when characters that end with i are combined with small(chiisai) kana from the y Column (ya yu yo). This combination creates a brand new syllable that is contracted and makes "one single sound". These are also called "yōon".

Hiragana is one of the three writing systems in the Japanese language, along with Katakana and Kanji. It is the foundation to learning Japanese, and once you master this kana, you can move on to the second step, learning Katakana and vocabulary!

Pronunciation by VOICEVOX: Takehiro Kurono
Music used in this video is provided by copyright free platform StreamBeats by Harris Heller.

Useful Resources:
Duolingo is another great free tool for learning the kana, so I suggest you give the app a try as well!

Chapters:
0:00 intro
0:05 k- Column
0:35 s- Column
1:05 c- Column
1:36 n- Column
2:06 h- Column
2:36 m- Column
3:06 r- Column
3:36 g- Column
4:07 *z- Column
4:37 *d- Column
5:07 b- Column
5:37 p- Column

I hope that this video is helpful to you and that you continue to study Japanese with me!