Second course of presentation of the second writing system of the Japanese language : the katakana. No need for a particularly long introduction, let’s get right into the thick of it.
So, what are katakana ? Like hiragana, katakana is a syllabic or syllabary alphabet. Each katakana corresponds to a syllable, consonants or vowels, and not to a sound as in our Latin alphabet. I want to remind you.
From there, I can already show you the whole alphabet of katakana which is organized in exactly the same way as the alphabet of hiragana. With the same columns, the same lines, the same number of syllables. I give you a quick presentation of this table below :
ア a
イ i
ウ u
エ e
オ o
カ ka
キ ki
ク ku
ケ ke
コ ko
サ sa
シ shi
ス su
セ se
ソ so
タ ta
チ chi
ツ tsu
テ te
ト to
ナ na
ニ ni
ヌ nu
ネ ne
ノ no
ハ ha
ヒ hi
フ fu
ヘ he
ホ ho
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 / o
ン n
To quickly introduce you to some katakana, I already show you some of them below :
ア A
ケ KE
コ KO
テ TE
ト TO
ナ NA
ニ NI
ユ YU
ヨ YO
ル RU
レ RE
ロ RO
I think you have already noticed some notable differences, notably the much more angular shape than the hiragana. They are mainly composed of straight lines. To show you the difference, let’s take the hiragana か ka and the katakana カ KA. The two are similar but you will notice that the first has curved shapes and the second is more angular. Another example with the hiragana み mi and the katakana ミ MI where the difference is much more obvious. The hiragana み mi is all curved while the katakana ミ MI is much more angular.
So, you get it, katakana don’t look like hiragana, so we’re going to be able to differentiate them. No problem there.
Again, regarding the origin of katakana, this too, I mentioned in the course titled Japanese language writing. The katakana comes from the kanji. However, there is a slight difference.
Hiragana, I already explained it to you in a very simple way, are made from kanji. Remember, I had explained to you in a very simple way that the Japanese quickly copied a few pieces of kanji to create their famous syllables with a lot less lines for more simplicity and put their own pronunciations on these newly created syllables.
Katakana, on the other hand, are parts of kanji. I show you below some examples of katakana which are not simplifications of kanji, but parts, pieces of kanji :
今 . フ
江 . エ
佑 . イ
加 . カ
夕 . ク
We will see all this in more detail when we study the readings and the functioning of kanji a little later. For now, let’s focus on our alphabet.
So, we have two syllabaries in Japanese, that of hiragana and that of katakana. Each is made up of fifty syllables, which gives us a total of a hundred syllables to learn by heart, and on top of that, they are two identical syllables with different scripts. It may sound very scary at first, so far, we haven’t touched on when are we going to use hiragana, when are we going to use katakana. It’s a lot to memorize, but I can assure you that it all makes perfect sense.
If you take English in comparison, at school you learned both English alphabets. Because there are two! The lowercase alphabet and the uppercase alphabet, not to mention the writing of the letters in capitals and attached. Casually, you may not remember it but it is a lot to learn. And you managed to learn all of this.
The Japanese language is the same thing. There is a lot to learn but again, it’s a step to take. Read, read again, practice writing, and you’ll finally memorize it all.
Also, I would like to take this opportunity to make a small remark on writing in rōmaji which we will see in more detail later. When you write the pronunciation of hiragana in rōmaji, you write it in lowercase. And when you write the pronunciation of katakana in rōmaji, you write it in capital letters. This helps to differentiate the two writing systems. Also note that the Kanji To Kana, the reference book for anyone who wants to learn the Japanese language, works a lot this way. You will find a lot of Japanese words written in rōmaji there: hiragana in lower case and katakana in upper case, and that makes it much easier to navigate.
We can now return to our katakana’s table :
ア a
イ i
ウ u
エ e
オ o
カ ka
キ ki
ク ku
ケ ke
コ ko
サ sa
シ shi
ス su
セ se
ソ so
タ ta
チ chi
ツ tsu
テ te
ト to
ナ na
ニ ni
ヌ nu
ネ ne
ノ no
ハ ha
ヒ hi
フ fu
ヘ he
ホ ho
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 / o
ン n
We find there the same columns, the same lines and the same peculiarities of pronunciation for the シ SHI, the チ CHI, the ツ TSU and the フ FU. We don’t have a « yi » and we don’t have a « ye ». These two sounds do not exist in Japanese. We also don’t have « wi », « we » and « wu ».
For your general culture, know that there existed a katakana ヰ (wi) and a katakana ヱ (we) which were removed during a reform of the Japanese language in the 1900s. The reason was the same for their equivalent in hiragana.
Finally, to finish, we have the ン N which is simply the sound [n] as in the word « man » where the syllable ン N is heard very slightly.
As with the hiragana, you can find tables on Google Image showing you how to properly draw the katakana.
Now, the question that arises is: what will the katakana serve us ? The first use of katakana is that they are used to write foreign words in Japanese. We will see later that there are, in Japanese, many foreign words, mainly English words, taken up by the Japanese who have included these foreign words in their language. As an English speaker, you can consider yourself luckier than the others because the borrowed words to the English language amount to several hundred words used very commonly in Japanese. Being English-speaking is therefore a small advantage when you want to learn Japanese. Some rare words have been borrowed from other languages such as the word « pizza » in Italian.
The Japanese too, when they opened up to the West (around the end of the 20th century, beginning of the 21st), discovered a lot of new things. Treatises on medicine, ships and steam trains, railways, Western clothing fashion... Lots of things they didn’t know, that they hadn’t seen before and they had to put a word on each of these things. The Western power that drove the Japanese to gradually open up to the West was the United States, and since the Americans speak English, the Japanese have therefore mostly used English words. Thus, in the vocabulary on medicine, new technologies and much later, video games, we will find many English words katakanized.
For the little historical anecdote, the katakana were created in the Heian period (between 794 and 1185), shortly after the hiragana and were originally used by Buddhist students to record the pronunciation of unknown Chinese characters. So, you understand that the Japanese did not wait for the opening to the West to invent the katakana. These had been created a long time ago.
Now, to give you some quick examples of katakanized English words, we have :
Camera . カメラ
Knife . ナイフ
Video . ビデオ
Rythme . リズム
Titan . タイタン
Note that the Japanese base themselves on the phonetics of English words to transcribe them into katakana. Take the last word as an example, the word « Titan ». In English, the letter « i » of « Titan » is pronounced [aj]. So, the Japanese are going to katakanize him well タイタン.
Japanese people have a word that is specific to their language to say « Titan » (or a synonymous word if you prefer). It is quite possible to katakanize English words that already have an equivalent in Japanese. The katakana will also be used to katakanize titles of films, names of video games, proper names of people (first and last name), names of monuments, place (forest, cities, megalopolises ...) and also the countries names. Or names of natural satellites. There is truly a natural satellite of the Moon which was baptized « Titan ». And the Japanese have katakanized the word in タイタン. Afterwards, you can very well have an artificial satellite which is called « Titan » in the West, and the Japanese will therefore katakanize the word, always starting from English. It’s entirely possible.
As you progress, you will come across a large number of Katakanized words that you will have to learn. Know already that 99% of these words will be English words. We will also soon see a vocabulary class where you will only have katakanized words. This course will come after we have finished this part on the presentation of Japanese writing systems and we have seen all there is to see concerning katakana.
The katakana will also be used to write the Sino-Japanese reading of the ideograms. For the moment, we have not yet talked about the kanji, we have not yet talked about the different readings of these ideograms. It’s something that certainly doesn’t tell you anything ; do not worry, we will come to it little by little. Believe me, it’ll be something that will be very useful to us. We’ll use it regularly but we will see all this in the part which will be exclusively devoted to kanji, so patience until then.
Finally, katakana can be used to write words that are generally written in hiragana in order to highlight them. A bit like us, in our western languages, which put words in italics to catch the eye of the reader in order to mean that what is in italics is important.
This course on the presentation of katakana is now over, thank you for reading it until the end. As said above, practice reading and reading again your katakana, practice writing until you memorize them, it will be useful for all the rest of your learning.
I leave you now to your exercises, available at the bottom of the page. Like the hiragana exercises, these exercises assess whether you are able to write your katakana and remember how to pronounce it.
In the first exercise, I give you katakana and you have to write the reading in rōmaji next to it. In the second exercise, I give you the reading in rōmaji and you must write the corresponding katakana next to it. Nothing complicated then, all this is only learning by heart.
I wish you to revise your course well and see you next time.
Introduction