1. What's the correct order to recite it (like if you were singing A to z)?
2. What would you say is the equivalent of "ABC" in Japanese?

The older order is from an old poem that stars with "iro ha": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha

The modern order is

あいうえお
かきくけこ
さしすせそ
たちつてと
なにぬねの
はひふへほ
まみむめも
やゆよ
らりるれる
わを
ん

Fillanzea Wrote:The modern order is

Where do ざじずぜぞ, ぱぴぷぺぽ, etc. go?

Dictionaries basically treat さ and ざ, for example, as variants of the same character -- so it's not all the ざ words after all the さ words, but rather, all the さ・ざ words mixed together, and the word with dakuten goes after if two words would overlap otherwise. (So, たす before だす.)

Similarly, if you had three words ひる、びる、ぴる, they would be in the dictionary in that order. ピザ is after ひざ and before ひる.

And to answer the inevitable follow-up, small characters are treated as normal, so しゃ is like しや. I think that the small ones go after the big ones if there's a conflict.

Interesting thanks!

So would the ABC equivalent if you had to choose (for example - like a child's book cover) be あかさ。。 or　あいう？

KanjiMood Wrote:Interesting thanks!

So would the ABC equivalent if you had to choose (for example - like a child's book cover) be あかさ。。 or　あいう？

Well, my sons' kana book was just called "かな" and went through them in the modern manner. I've seen kana charts in their classrooms and in the first graders rooms when I taught elementary school that also just went through the modern manner.

KanjiMood Wrote:So would the ABC equivalent if you had to choose (for example - like a child's book cover) be あかさ。。 or　あいう？

It would be あいうえおかきくけこ...

If you need the idiomatic equivalent of ABC (in expressions like "to know your ABCs" or "the ABC of cooking"), then the closest thing actually comes from the old order - いろは (e.g. 料理のいろは). If you want to refer specifically to kana and/or the modern order, I think あいうえお would work the best (like in the name of this TV show).

Nice, thanks for that Peter. Just what I was looking for.