There are a few more things that you need to know about how hiragana are used:

Small tsu
We've already seen how a small ya, yu or yo can combine with other hiragana to produce different syllables; ki plus a small ya is kya, and so on. Similarly, a small tsu and a big tsu have different uses. A big tsu is pronounced, er, tsu, whereas a small tsu acts as a sort of double consonant.

kakou (firelight)

kakkou (each item)

With the addition of the small tsu just in front of it, the ko has its initial k-sound "doubled"; instead of kakou we get something more like kak-kou. Another example, but this time the doubled consonant is the t-sound from to:

hato (pigeon)

hatto (a ban, prohibition)

wa / ha
The particle wa (topic marker, usually translated "as for...") is written using the hiragana character (ha), not (wa) . So when you see a , how are you supposed to know whether to pronounce it ha or wa? The answer is "context", and it's something I can't really help you with. If the sentence would make sense with a particle, then it's wa. If the character is clearly part of an entire word, it's ha.


hagaki wa... ("as for the postcards...")

This is one of those moments where the relationship between the alphabet and the language makes it important to study both in parallel.

e / he
The particle e ("to" / "towards") is written using the hiragana character (he), not (e). As with ha / wa above, then, the context of the sentence will tell you whether to pronounce as he or e.