ne / ね
The fourth of the N row — a flowing 'ne' that doubles as the conversational particle every textbook teaches first.
Pronunciation
The character ね represents the syllable 'ne', a soft 'n' followed by 'e' as in 'pet'. Part of the な-row. Take care: ね, れ, and わ all share a similar left-side structure but differ on the right — ね has a closed loop, れ has no loop, わ has a different rightward curve.
ね anchors the ね-row and is one of the most-used hiragana in conversational Japanese. As a sentence-ending particle, it works like the English "…right?" or "…isn't it?" — softening statements and inviting agreement (いいですね, "that's good, isn't it?"). It also appears in 猫 (cat), お金 (money), 寝る (to sleep), and dozens of everyday nouns and verbs.
How to write ね
Trace ね on the canvas at the top of the page. Animated arrows show each stroke's direction; trace along them and the stroke fills in. Each numbered step below explains what that stroke does.
A short vertical stroke on the left — straight or with a faint inward curve.
A long flowing stroke that begins at the upper right, drops straight down past the first vertical, then loops around at the bottom in a closed circle on the lower right, and exits with a small flick. The loop is ね's signature — similar to ぬ but with the small left-side vertical visually anchoring it.
Origin
Hiragana ね traces back to the cursive form of the kanji 祢 (ne) — meaning "ancestor's shrine." The kanji's left radical (示, altar) compressed into the small left vertical; the right side's curving strokes flowed together into the looping body that defines ね.
Common words starting with ね
Printable practice sheet
Print this worksheet to practice writing ね by hand — the top row shows the stroke order to trace, then fill the blank squares.
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