In this lesson you will be introduced to the katakana characters.
Katakana consists of 45 characters, with some additional modified sounds. It consists of the same sounds as the hiragana characters.
Katakana is mostly used for loan words, such as テレビ (terebi = television) and エアコン (eakon = air condition). As you saw in these examples, the words may resemble the original words more or less. The loan words are often shortened. So, sometimes it’s really hard to tell which foreign word it came from, even if it came from English.
Katakana is sometimes also used when the author wants to strengthen a word, to make it stand out from the rest of the sentence. It may also be used, for instance in advertising, to give an international touch to the message. It is also often used for sounds, for instance in manga. It has also become popular, especially among young people, to use katakana for some words to just make a sentence a bit more fun.
As well as for the kanji characters, the katakana characters have over 1000 years old roots. When the kanji system was imported from China, some characters were simplified and used as phonetical characters.
Basic Katakana Table
This table shows all katakana characters.
| Basic Katakana | Modified Sounds | ||||||||||||||
| ア a | イ i | ウ u | エ e | オ o | |||||||||||
| カ ka | キ ki | ク ku | ケ ke | コ ko | ガ ga | ギ gi | グ gu | ゲ ge | ゴ go | ||||||
| サ sa | シ si | ス su | セ se | ソ so | ザ za | ジ ji | ズ zu | ゼ ze | ゾ zo | ||||||
| タ ta | チ chi | ツ tsu | テ te | ト to | ダ da | ヂ ji | ヅ zu | デ de | ド do | ||||||
| ナ na | ニ ni | ヌ nu | ネ ne | ノ no | |||||||||||
| ハ ha | ヒ hi | フ fu | ヘ he | ホ ho | バ ba | ビ bi | ブ bu | ベ be | ボ bo | パ pa | ピ pi | プ pu | ペ pe | ポ po | |
| マ ma | ミ mi | ム mu | メ me | モ mo | |||||||||||
| ヤ ya | ユ yu | ヨ yo | |||||||||||||
| ラ ra | リ ri | ル ru | レ re | ロ ro | |||||||||||
| ワ wa | ヲ wo | ||||||||||||||
| ン n | |||||||||||||||
Exercise
Now, using the table above, try to read the following words. The pronunciation and English meaning can be seen if holding your mouse above the light gray areas behind each word.
a) テレビ – terebi – television
b) リモコン – rimokon – remote control
c) パソコン – pasokon – PC (personal computer)
d) カラオケ – karaoke – karaoke
e) ドア – doa – door
f) テラス – terasu – terrace
g) ライト – raito – light
So print out the Katanka sheet and try to memorize the characters. It may be easier to remember if you practice by writing them down by hand. Just note that all Japanese characters has a rule saying in which order to draw the lines (strokes). It may feel hard to learn the stroke order too, but it does actually help you later to remember the character.