Welcome back to the second lesson in the series! Hopefully by now you've studied the first fifteen kana. Or, at least to familiar with the first five and the pattern we're following.
あ い う え お
か き く け こ (+'k')
さ し す せ そ (+'s')

The next fifteen, or three lines are the た, な and は lines. They, again, are a consonant attached to one of the five vowels! Although, there are a few irregulars to keep in mind, but don't worry as they make sense!

た (ta) as in 'tight',
ち (chi) as in 'cheap' - notice here it's not 'ti',
つ (tsu) as in 'tsunami' - and here, it's not 'tu'. It's almost 'tu' but the 't' is much softer.,
て (te) as in 'table',
と (to) as in 'toe' - the character kind-of lookes like a toe!

な (na) as in 'night',
に (ni) as in 'knee',
ぬ (nu) as in 'noon',
ね (ne) as in 'never',
の (no) as in 'no' - and looks a bit like a 'no entry' sign.

ぬ (nu) and ね (ne) have some lookalikes. め (me) and ぬ (nu) are written in same same way except ぬ (nu) has a curly loop at the end.

わ (wa) and れ (re) are similar to ね (ne). Remember that ぬ (nu) and ね (ne) have a curly end like a 'noodle'!

は (ha) as in 'height',
ひ (hi) as in 'here', not 'hi' (like 'hello') - there is no 'eye' sound in Japanese,
ふ (hu) as in 'who',
へ as in 'hey',
ほ (ho) as in 'hole'.

You might see the pronunciation of ふ written like (fu), but the actual ふ sounds like (hu) like the word 'who'. The English strong / f / sound doesn't exist in Japanese.

Another feature of the language is that the sounds of the kana will never change depending on which sounds they're next to. However, there is an exception. は (ha) is sometimes pronounced as (wa) when it is used as a grammatical part of a sentence. Don't worry about this for now. Most of the time, は (ha) is は (ha).

And here's today's homework:

• • Watch the video, and match the shape with its sound. You can see the next lines of kana on the chart
• • Follow the stroke order and write it on your own on a piece of paper 10× times or more. Gridded paper can help you get the proportions correct which you can download and print here.
• • Then, write it down again without looking at anything.
• • Come back in 3 days to repeat Task 3. Set a reminder on your calendar while you remember!