Hiragana Quiz (ひらがな)

Set the quiz to type the answer rather than pick one of four. Four options let you rule out three and land on the right one without ever recalling it, which feels like progress and is not. Typing the romaji is the same thing your brain has to do when you meet hiragana in a real sentence.

Kunrei spellings are accepted, so si for し, ti for ち, tu for つ, hu for ふ and sya for しゃ are all marked correct. They are legitimate romanisations, not typos, and which one you were taught depends on where you learned.

Hiragana is a grid: five vowels across, ten consonant families down. Practising five characters that share a consonant is far easier than five unrelated ones, because you are learning one pattern rather than five facts. Read a row on the hiragana chart, then quiz until it is automatic, then take the next row.

Once the basic 46 are solid, switch the difficulty to Advanced for the dakuten. Those are the same shapes with two strokes or a small circle added, so they cost far less effort than the first 46 did.

Four sets cause most early mistakes. は and ほ differ by one extra horizontal stroke. ね, れ and わ differ only in what the final stroke does: ね loops, れ hooks outward, わ curves inward. め and ぬ are the same except ぬ ends in a loop. る and ろ follow that same rule.

If you keep missing one of those, quiz it deliberately rather than hoping it comes up. Getting a character wrong and immediately seeing the right answer is worth more than three correct answers you were already sure of.

The Combinations setting drills きゃ, しゅ, ちょ and the rest: an i-column kana followed by a small ゃ, ゅ or ょ. Each pair is one syllable. Written full size, きや is ki-ya, two beats and a different word, so the size of that second character is doing real work.

Most beginner courses skip these until later, which is why learners who can read every basic kana still stall on words like しゃしん (shashin, photo). Drilling them separately fixes that quickly.