The gojūon is a map, not a list

Vowels across, consonants down

The gojūon (五十音図, "fifty sounds") arranges kana by the logic of their sounds. Drawn horizontally, as the charts on this site are, each row shares a consonant and each column shares a vowel.

A row is called a gyō (行). The ka-row is か き く け こ — k plus a, i, u, e, o. A column is called a dan (段); the a-column is あ か さ た な…, all the kana whose vowel is a.

So knowing the ka-row is not five separate facts. It is one rule: attach k to the five vowels.

Learn the ten row names as a rhythm

Before the full chart, get the row names into your mouth: a ka sa ta na ha ma ya ra wa. There are only ten, and saying them aloud a few times is usually enough.

This is also dictionary order in Japanese. You will use it every time you look a word up or read an alphabetized list of names.

a ka sa ta na ha ma ya ra wa — multiply by the five vowels a i u e o and you have the whole chart.

Where the grid has holes

Despite the name, there are 46 characters, not 50. The gaps have reasons.

• The ya-row has only や ゆ よ. The sounds for yi and ye were lost.
• The wa-row kept only わ and を. ゐ (wi) and ゑ (we) were dropped in the 1946 spelling reform.
• を is used only as the object particle. It is pronounced the same as お.
• ん belongs to no row. It is the only kana without a vowel, so it sits outside the chart.

Four sounds that break the pattern

Four kana are not pronounced the way consonant + vowel would predict. Knowing them up front saves errors later.

Read the chart down as well as across

Most people drill across — ka ki ku ke ko. Reading down is what moves the needle: a ka sa ta na ha ma ya ra wa, holding the vowel steady.

Reading down fixes the vowel and varies the consonant, which forces you to retrieve each character without leaning on the sequence. The shuffled questions on this site do the same thing — they take the crutch of order away.