Japanese writing systems

Japanese writing systems

Katakana is used when writing down foreign names, places, and words of foreign origin (If you are not from Japan, your name can be written in katakana). Without knowing katakana, one might find it almost impossible to order fast food in Japan, or read billboards on the street. This is because Japan uses so many words borrowed from other languages (click 20120k1011u here for more on borrowed words).

The structure of katakana is similar to hiragana (if you know one the other is easy to learn). The main difference between the two is katakana is composed of straight lines, where hiragana uses curved lines.

Katakana Chart

Before we start, I want to remind you about Japanese writing. Japanese is a written combination of three scripts, hiragana, katakana and kanji. The Roman alphabet (Romaji) is also sometimes used, mainly for the convenience of foreigners.  Roughly speaking, kanji represents blocks of meaning and hiragana expresses the grammatical relationship between them. Katakana is used for foreign names, place names, and words of foreign origin.

sample words

sample words

sample words

sample words

sample words

sample words

sample words

sample words

sample words

sample words

These sounds are formed by adding a small  "ya" "yu" or  "yo" to the katakana character.

They didn't exist until relatively recently. Nowadays the Japanese use many borrowed words from English and other foreign languages (please refer the previous article "Borrowed Words" and "Borrowed English"). Since it is hard to express all sounds by the basic 46 characters or their regular combinations, the Japanese have developed new combinations that are formed by adding a small "a, i, u, e, o" for several foreign syllables.