Lesson 3 of 12
Kana Sprint 3 — た and な
about 5 minutes
After this lesson you can
- Read the た and な rows on sight, including ち and つ.
- Read さとう, the name of the visitor whose umbrella it is.
Words this lesson teaches
- なか
- inside — na-ka
- となり
- next door, the one beside — to-na-ri, and り is Sprint 5
- ねこ
- cat — ne-ko
- さとう
- Sato, the visitor from Foundations — sa-to-u
- つくえ
- desk — tsu-ku-e
What it explains
ち and つ are the sounds, not the spellings
The た row is t plus each vowel, except that t before i comes out as chi and t before u as tsu. This is not an irregularity you have to memorise as an exception — it is what a t does in front of those vowels in Japanese, every time, in every word. つ is the harder of the two for an English speaker because English never starts a syllable with ts. It is one sound, not two: say cats and keep only the ts.
The shapes that repeat
ぬ and ね share a body and differ in the tail; め and れ, from later sprints, are built the same way. Four characters, one family, and mixing them up is the single most common reading error at this stage. た is the first character built from two clearly separate parts, which makes it easy. の is one stroke and appears constantly, because it is also a particle you will meet in Foundations.