こんにちは！

げんきですか  
はい、げんきですよ！

Sorry it has been so long. This time I have a fairly valid reason or two.
I went to visit my ex father-in-law. While I was there, I left my charger for my laptop. Oops! It was a few days before I could get it back. Then, during the time I DIDN'T have my charger, my laptop SOMEHOW came down with a virus. It took some time to finally get rid of it. But, I did it.

Okay, enough with that.

I hope during the break you reviewed everything, because today is going to be packed.

Today, we start with, in my opinion, the most important kana.

You remember 'tsu', right? つ = (tsu). Well, THIS kana has a special purpose. When you see it in it's smaller form, you double the consonant that follows it. ONLY THE CONSONANT! Do NOT double the complete kana.

Example: saka = さか = hill. sakka = さっか = author. See the difference in the sizes of the kana? The  っつ.  When inputting the romaji for writing it on the IME keyboard, you simply double the consonant.

Now, the slightly harder part, READING the sokoun (small tsu). Keeping in mind that Japanese is a stress-less language, this little thingy seems to add stress. What you do when reading it is to add a slight pause (VERY SLIGHT) before reading the rest of the word. Doing this makes it a hard consonant.

Examples: いった = itte = this is the te-form of 'say'. You read it like い(pause)て. The て will have a hard t sound.

もうゆっくりいってください。 There are two in that sentence. Let me break it down for you.
もう = mou = again. ゆっくり = yukkuri = slowly. いって = say. ください = kudasai = please.
Please say again slowly.

まって = matte. This again is the te-form of to wait. ま(pause)て.

I honestly believe that the sokoun is probably one of the most fun things to use. I enjoy the sound it makes, lol. I am a nerd.

Okay, now, strap in. This are going to get... interesting. I have to admit I still have problems with these sometimes. I have to think about them way to hard when using them. But, like everything else, they come with time.

The glides.

The 'y' kana you learned before? These are what are used to make the glides. You combine the smaller form with the 'i' kana. And here is where I get confusing. When I refer to the 'i' kana, I don't mean い. I mean all of the others. The き and the し and the り and ALL of the others...

Here we go!

き + (small や) = きゃ = one smooth sound of kya. NOT kiya. Kiya would be きや (notice the sizes of the や)

Actually, I have  a better idea. You can see the way they are written AND how they sound. This will also be less confusing than me typing them out and trying to explain how they sound.

Here you go!

And with that, we wrap up the Hiragana. Congratulations! おめでとう! (Congratulations)

I will not be giving out vocab this time as this is quite a bit to take in. I will return in a couple of days with words for you!
I will also be adding kanji to these lessons. At least the ones I know, lol. Until then, じゃまったね!