Kana

I have made some Word documents to help me learn to write Katakana and Hiragana. You are welcome to download them, print and use them, and share them as you wish:

Hiragana writing practice Katakana writing practice

Screenshot of Hiragana.doc
Screenshot of Hiragana.doc
(click the image to enlarge)

Please email me if you have trouble downloading them or if I have made any mistakes. Note that they are type characters, as opposed to written characters, so some of them would normally be written a little differently than they appear in the document ('sa', 'ki', etc.) If you've learned some Hiragana already, you probably know what I'm talking about.

Note also that the font "MS Mincho" needs to be on your system to view the documents properly. Here are instructions from www.lexikan.com explaining how to get MS Mincho:

Install from Windows 2000/ME

To install MS Mincho from Windows 2000/ME, perform the following steps:

  1. select "Start - Settings - Control Panel"
  2. double-click the "Add/Remove Programs" icon
  3. select the "Windows Setup" tab
  4. look for the "Multilanguage Support" option
Once in the setup program, look for Japanese Font or Language Support under Multilanguage or International Support (sometimes listed in Office Tools). Activating this option should install the MS Mincho font on your machine.

Install from Windows XP

To install MS Mincho from Windows XP, perform the following steps:

  1. select "Start - Control Panel"
  2. click the "Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options" link and then the "Add Other Languages" link **OR** if in the Classic view, double-click the "Regional and Language Options" icon
  3. in the next dialog, select the "Install Files for East Asian Languages" option and click OK
This will install fonts for Chinese and Korean, in addition to the MS Mincho font.

I learned Hiragana and Katakana from a book called Remembering the Hiragana/Katakana: A Complete Course on How to Teach Yourself by James W. Heisig, Helmut Morsbach, and Kazue Kurebayashi. You can get it at Amazon.com, among other places. I highly recommend it.

I have also found a few Hiragana/Katakana TTF fonts online which I have put here for download. I don't remember where I got them, but I think they are shareware/freeware. If you know otherwise, please email me and let me know:

Hiragana font

Katakana font

May 21, 2002 :: :: home