By Maria Garcia

Lately in class we have been busy, but what else is new? Every day we learn something, and well after our midterm, a break was needed. I love the class and the energy from my new group. (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention we have new groups!) This group is funny and stays on track with everything, so getting work done won’t be difficult. Either way, a couple of classes ago, we started this new alphabet called Hiragana.

Hiragana is composed of forty-six characters, just like in katakana. The only difference would be in the appearance of the characters, and when they are used. From my understandings, it is used as particles in the typical sentence structure. Katakana is used to make foreign words legible for Japanese people, while Hiragana is used as the standard form of writing system. Children first learn Hiragana and then move on to Katakana and Kanji. Unlike Katakana, I think this alphabet will be a little more difficult for me to grasp. Hiragana is commonly used with kanji to make words. Studying will be crucial if I want to stay on track with the program and my new group. But it will be fun learning alongside new people and friends.