Information about Katakana

Katakana カタカ?
Type	Syllabary
Languages	Japanese, Okinawan and Ainu
Time period	~800 A.D. to the present
Parent systems	Kanji  → Man'yōgana   → Katakana カタカ?
Sister systems	Hiragana, Hentaigana
Unicode range	U+30A0–U+30FF
ISO 15924	Kana
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Katakana (片仮名, カタカナ or かたかな|, Katakana) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. The word katakana means "fragmentary kana," as they are derived from components of more complex kanji.

Katakana are characterized by short straight strokes and angular corners, and are the simplest of the Japanese scripts.

There are two main systems of ordering katakana, the old-fashioned iroha ordering, and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.

Usage

In modern Japanese, katakana are most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages (called gairaigo). For example, "television" is written terebi (テレビ|, terebi). Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names and foreign place and personal names. For example America is written アメリカ Amerika (America has its own kanji (ateji) Amerika (亜米利加|, Amerika) or for short, Beikoku (米国|, Beikoku) which literally means "Rice Country").

Katakana are also used for onomatopoeia, letters used to represent sounds, for example pinpon (ピンポン|, pinpon), the "ding-dong" sound of a doorbell, would usually be written in katakana.

Technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animal and plant species and minerals are also commonly written in katakana.

Katakana are also often, but not always, used for transcription of Japanese company names. For example Suzuki is written スズキ, and Toyota is written トヨタ. Katakana are also used for emphasis, especially on signs, advertisements, and hoardings. For example, it is common to see ココ koko ("here"), ゴミ gomi ("trash") or メガネ megane ("glasses"), and words to be emphasized in a sentence are also sometimes written in katakana, mirroring the European usage of italics.

Pre-World War II official documents mix katakana and kanji in the same way that hiragana and kanji are mixed in modern Japanese texts, that is, katakana were used for okurigana and particles such as wa or o.

Katakana were also used for telegrams in Japan before 1988 and before the introduction of multibyte characters in computer systems in the 1980s. Most computers used katakana instead of kanji and/or hiragana for output.

Although words borrowed from ancient Chinese are usually written in kanji, loanwords from modern Chinese dialects which are borrowed directly rather than using the Sino-Japanese on'yomi readings, are often written in katakana. Examples include

• マージャン (麻將/麻雀), mājan (mahjong); in Mandarin májiàng
• ウーロン茶 (烏龍茶), ūroncha (Oolong tea), from Mandarin wūlóng
• チャーハン (炒飯), chāhan, (fried rice)
• チャーシュー(叉焼), chāshū, from Cantonese cha siu, roast pork
• シューマイ (焼売), shūmai, from Cantonese siu maai, a kind of dim sum.

The very common Chinese loanword ラーメン (rāmen) is rarely written with its kanji 拉麺.

There are rare cases where the opposite has occurred, with kanji forms created from words originally written in katakana. An example of this is コーヒー (kōhii), "coffee", which can be alternatively written as 珈琲. This kanji usage is occasionally employed by coffee manufacturers or coffee shops for novelty.

Katakana are sometimes used instead of hiragana as furigana to give the pronunciation of a word written in Roman characters, or for a foreign word, which is written as kanji for the meaning, but intended to be pronounced as the original.

Katakana are also sometimes used to indicate words being spoken in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent, by foreign characters, robots etc. For example, in a manga, the speech of a foreign character or a robot may be represented by コンニチワ (konnichiwa) instead of the more usual hiragana こんにちは (konnichi wa).

Katakana are also used to indicate the on'yomi (Chinese-derived readings) of a kanji in a kanji dictionary.

Some Japanese personal names are written in katakana. This was more common in the past, hence elderly women often have katakana names.

It is very common to write words with difficult-to-read kanji in katakana. This phenomenon is often seen with medical terminology. For example, in the word "dermatology", 皮膚科, hifuka, the second kanji, 膚, is considered difficult, and thus the word hifuka is commonly written as 皮フ科 or ヒフ科 in katakana. Similarly, difficult kanji such as 癌 gan, "cancer", are often written in katakana or hiragana.

Katakana is also used for traditional musical notations, as in the Tozan-ryū of shakuhachi, and in sankyoku ensembles with koto, shamisen, and shakuhachi.

Orthography

Foreign phrases are sometimes transliterated with a middle dot called nakaguro (中黒|, nakaguro) or a space separating the words. However, in cases where it is assumed that the reader knows the separate gairaigo words in the phrase, the middle dot is not used. For example, the phrase コンピュータゲーム (konpyūta gēmu)(computer game), containing two very well-known gairaigo, is not written with a middle dot.

Katakana spelling differs slightly from hiragana. While hiragana spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana, katakana usually uses a vowel extender mark called a chōon. This mark is a short line following the direction of the text, horizontal in yokogaki, or horizontal text, and vertical in tategaki, or vertical text. However, it is more often used when writing foreign loanwords; long vowels in Japanese words written in katakana are usually written as they would be in hiragana. There are exceptions such as ローソク(蝋燭)(rōsoku)(candle) or ケータイ(携帯)(kētai)(mobile phone).

A small tsu ッ called a sokuon indicates a geminate consonant, which is represented in rōmaji by doubling the following consonant. For example, bed is written in katakana as ベッド (beddo).

The sokuon is sometimes used in places which have no equivalent in native sounds. For example, double-h in place of ch is common in German names. Bach, for example, comes out as バッハ (Bahha); Mach is マッハ (Mahha). The doubling of the "h" in Bach and Mach (or the underlying small tsu) is probably the kana that best fits those German names.

Related sounds in various languages are hard to express in Japanese, so Khrushchev becomes フルシチョフ (Furushichofu). Ali Khamenei is アリー・ハーメネイー (Arii Hāmeneii). The Japanese Wikipedia has references to イツハク・パールマン (Itsuhaku Pāruman) and イツァーク・パールマン (Itsāku Pāruman), Itzhak Perlman.

Table of katakana

This is a table of katakana together with their Hepburn romanization. The first chart sets out the standard katakana (characters in red are obsolete, and characters in green are modern additions to the katakana, used mainly to represent sounds from other languages.) Learning to read katakana is often complicated by the similarities between different characters. For example, shi シ and tsu ツ , as well as so ソ and n ン , look very similar in print except for the slant and stroke shape. (These differences are more prominent when written with an ink brush, due to the directions of the strokes.)

vowels					yōon
ア a	イ i	ウ u	エ e	オ o	ya	yu	yo
カ ka	キ ki	ク ku	ケ ke	コ ko	キャ kya	キュ kyu	キョ kyo
サ sa	シ shi	ス su	セ se	ソ so	シャ sha	シュ shu	ショ sho
タ ta	チ chi	ツ tsu	テ te	ト to	チャ cha	チュ chu	チョ cho
ナ na	ニ ni	ヌ nu	ネ ne	ノ no	ニャ nya	ニュ nyu	ニョ nyo
ハ ha	ヒ hi	フ fu	ヘ he	ホ ho	ヒャ hya	ヒュ hyu	ヒョ hyo
マ ma	ミ mi	ム mu	メ me	モ mo	ミャ mya	ミュ myu	ミョ myo
ヤ ya		ユ yu		ヨ yo
ラ ra	リ ri	ル ru	レ re	ロ ro	リャ rya	リュ ryu	リョ ryo
ワ wa	ヰ wi		ヱ we	ヲ wo 1
				ン n
ガ ga	ギ gi	グ gu	ゲ ge	ゴ go	ギャ gya	ギュ gyu	ギョ gyo
ザ za	ジ ji	ズ zu	ゼ ze	ゾ zo	ジャ ja	ジュ ju	ジョ jo
ダ da	ヂ (ji)	ヅ (zu)	デ de	ド do	ヂャ (ja)	ヂュ (ju)	ヂョ (jo)
バ ba	ビ bi	ブ bu	ベ be	ボ bo	ビャ bya	ビュ byu	ビョ byo
パ pa	ピ pi	プ pu	ペ pe	ポ po	ピャ pya	ピュ pyu	ピョ pyo
ヴァ va	ヴィ vi	ヴ vu	ヴェ ve	ヴォ vo	ヴャ vya	ヴュ vyu	ヴョ vyo
			シェ she
			ジェ je
			チェ che
	スィ si
	ズィ zi
	ティ ti	トゥ tu				テュ tyu
	ディ di	ドゥ du				デュ dyu
ツァ tsa	ツィ tsi		ツェ tse	ツォ tso
ファ fa	フィ fi		フェ fe	フォ fo		フュ fyu
	2 yi		( 2) イェ ye
	ウィ wi	2 wu	ウェ we	ウォ wo
(クヮ) クァ kwa	クィ kwi		クェ kwe	クォ kwo
(グヮ) グァ gwa	グィ gwi		グェ gwe	グォ gwo

¹: ヲ ("wo") sounds the same as オ ("o"), but it's rarely used except when the corresponding hiragana has to be represented in an all-katakana environment.

²: These katakana were introduced into the education system in the early Meiji period, but never became widespread. [1] [2]

History

Katakana was developed in the early Heian Period from parts of man'yōgana characters as a form of shorthand. For example, ka カ comes from the left side of ka 加 "increase". The table below shows the origins of each katakana: the red markings of the original Chinese character eventually became each corresponding symbol.

Computer encoding

In addition to fonts intended for Japanese text and Unicode catch-all fonts (like Arial Unicode MS), many fonts intended for Chinese text also include katakana (such as MS Song).

Katakana have two forms of encoding, halfwidth hankaku (半角|, hankaku) and fullwidth zenkaku (全角|, zenkaku). The halfwidth forms come from JIS X 0201 originally. This includes halfwidth Katakana in right side area of ASCII. That is, most halfwidth Katakana could be represented by one byte each. In the late 1970s, two-byte character sets such as JIS X 0208 were introduced to represent Hiraganas, Kanjis and other characters. JIS_X_0208 has its own Katakana area independently of one-byte character set such as JIS_X_0201. Katakana of JIS_X_0208 takes two-byte (at least), so many (especially old) devices output these Katakanas as two-byte-width. This is why Katakana of JIS_X_0201 is called halfwidth and JIS_X_0208, fullwidth. Therefore, most encodings have no halfwidth Hiragana.

Although often said to be obsolete, in fact the halfwidth katakana are still used in many systems and encodings. For example, the titles of mini discs can only be entered in ASCII or halfwidth katakana, and halfwidth katakana were commonly used in computerized cash register displays, on shop receipts, and Japanese digital television and DVD subtitles. Several popular Japanese encodings such as EUC-JP, Unicode and Shift-JIS have halfwidth Katakana code as well as fullwidth. By contrast, ISO-2022-JP has no halfwidth Katakana, and is mainly used over SMTP and NNTP. Halfwidth katakana are commonly used to save memory space.

Unicode

In Unicode, fullwidth katakana occupy code points U+30A0 to U+30FF [3]:

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

30A

゠

ァ

ア

ィ

イ

ゥ

ウ

ェ

エ

ォ

オ

カ

ガ

キ

ギ

?

30B

グ

ケ

ゲ

コ

ゴ

サ

ザ

シ

ジ

ス

ズ

セ

ゼ

ソ

ゾ

?

30C

ダ

チ

ヂ

ッ

ツ

ヅ

テ

デ

ト

ド

ナ

ニ

ヌ

ネ

ノ

?

30D

バ

パ

ヒ

ビ

ピ

フ

ブ

プ

ヘ

ベ

ペ

ホ

ボ

ポ

マ

?

30E

ム

メ

モ

ャ

ヤ

ュ

ユ

ョ

ヨ

ラ

リ

ル

レ

ロ

ヮ

?

30F

ヰ

ヱ

ヲ

ン

ヴ

ヵ

ヶ

ヷ

ヸ

ヹ

ヺ

・

ー

ヽ

ヾ

?

Halfwidth equivalents to the fullwidth katakana also exist. These are encoded within the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block (U+FF00–U+FFEF) [4], starting at U+FF65 and ending at U+FF9F (characters U+FF61–U+FF64 are halfwidth punctuation marks):

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

FF6

｠

｡

｢

｣

､

･

ｦ

ｧ

ｨ

ｩ

ｪ

ｫ

ｬ

ｭ

ｮ

?

FF7

ｰ

ｱ

ｲ

ｳ

ｴ

ｵ

ｶ

ｷ

ｸ

ｹ

ｺ

ｻ

ｼ

ｽ

ｾ

?

FF8

ﾀ

ﾁ

ﾂ

ﾃ

ﾄ

ﾅ

ﾆ

ﾇ

ﾈ

ﾉ

ﾊ

ﾋ

ﾌ

ﾍ

ﾎ

?

FF9

ﾐ

ﾑ

ﾒ

ﾓ

ﾔ

ﾕ

ﾖ

ﾗ

ﾘ

ﾙ

ﾚ

ﾛ

ﾜ

ﾝ

ﾞ

?

Code points 32D0 to 32FE list Circled Katakana. Note: A circled ン is missing

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

32D

㋐

㋑

㋒

㋓

㋔

㋕

㋖

㋗

㋘

㋙

㋚

㋛

㋜

㋝

㋞

?

32E

㋠

㋡

㋢

㋣

㋤

㋥

㋦

㋧

㋨

㋩

㋪

㋫

㋬

㋭

㋮

?

32F

㋰

㋱

㋲

㋳

㋴

㋵

㋶

㋷

㋸

㋹

㋺

㋻

㋼

㋽

㋾

Katakana for the Ainu language

Katakana is sometimes used to write the Ainu language. In Ainu language katakana usage, the consonant that comes at the end of a syllable is represented by a small version of a katakana that corresponds to that final consonant and with an arbitrary vowel. For instance "up" is represented by ウㇷ゚ (u followed by small pu). In Unicode, the Katakana Phonetic Extensions block (U+31F0–U+31FF) [5] exists for Ainu language support. These characters are used mainly for the Ainu language only:

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

31F

ㇰ

ㇱ

ㇲ

ㇳ

ㇴ

ㇵ

ㇶ

ㇷ

ㇸ

ㇹ

ㇺ

ㇻ

ㇼ

ㇽ

ㇾ

?

Example transcriptions of Katakana and foreign languages

Medicine

Original word	Katakana	Rōmaji
Vitamin (de)	ビタミ?	Bitamin
Mineral (en)	ミネラ?	Mineraru
Calcium (la)	カルシウ?	Karushiumu
Hormone (en)	ホルモ?	Horumon

Computing

Original word	Katakana	Rōmaji	Kanji and other words
Mouse (en)	マウ?	Mausu
Keyboard (en)	キーボー?	Kiibōdo
Display (en)	ディスプレ?	Disupurei	画面 gamen
Pointer (en)	ポイン?	Pointa
Programming (en)	プログラミン?	Puroguramingu
Software (en)	ソフトウェ?	Sofutouea
Hardware (en)	ハードウェ?	Hādouea
Operating system (en)	オペレーティング・システ?	Operētingu shisutemu	基本ソフト kihonsofuto OS ōesu
Internet (en)	インターネッ?	Intānetto
Web (en)	ウェ?	Uebu

Names

from English names

Original word	Katakana	Rōmaji
John (en)	ジョ?	Jon
George (en)	ジョー?	Jōji
Marie (en)	マリ?	Marii
Michael (en)	マイケ?	Maikeru

from German names

Maria (de)	マリ?	Maria
Michael (de)	ミハエル, ミヒャエ?	Mihaeru, Mihyaeru

Regions

Original word	Katakana	Rōmaji	Kanji
America (en)	アメリ?	Amerika	米国 beikoku
Latin America (en)	ラテンアメリ?	Raten Amerika	中南米 chūnambei
Europe (pt)	ヨーロッ?	Yōroppa	欧州 ōshū
Asia (en)	アジ?	Ajia	亜州 ashū
Africa (en)	アフリ?	Afurika	阿州 ashū
Oceania (en)	オセアニ?	Oseania	大洋州 taiyōshū

Nations and cities

Original word	Katakana	Rōmaji	English name	Local name
New York (en)	ニューヨー?	Nyū Yōku
Los Angeles (en) (es)	ロサンゼル?	Rosanzerusu
Canada (en)	カナ?	Kanada
Toronto (en)	トロン?	Toronto
Argentina (en) (es)	アルゼンチ?	Aruzenchin
Buenos Aires (en)	ブエノスアイレ?	Buenosu Airesu
Brazil (en)	ブラジ?	Burajiru		Brasil (pt)
London (en)	ロンド?	Rondon
Finland (en)	フィンラン?	Finrando
France (fr) (en)	フラン?	Furansu
Paris (fr)	パ?	Pari
Singapore (en)	シンガポー?	Shingapōru
Deutschland (de)	ドイ?	Doitsu	Germany (en)
Berlin (de)	ベルリ?	Berurin
Portugal (pt) (en)	ポルトガ?	Porutogaru
Lisbon (en)	リスボ?	Risbon		Lisboa (pt)
Lithuania (en)	リトアニ?	Rituania	Lithuania (en)	Lietuva (lt)
Olanda (pt) / Holanda (pt) / Holland (nl) (en)	オラン?	Oranda	Holland / The Netherlands (en)	Holland / Nederland (nl)
Poland (en)	ポーラン?	Pōrando		Polska (pl)
Italia (it)	イタリ?	Itaria	Italy (en)
Roma (it) (lt)	ロー?	Rōma	Rome (en)
Mexico (en)	メキシ?	Mekishiko		Mexico (es)
Madrid (en)	マドリッ?	Madoriddo
Russia (en)	ロシ?	Roshia		Росси́я, Rossiya (ru)
India (en)	イン?	Indo		Bhārat (hi)
Indonesia (id)	インドネシ?	Indoneshia
Malaysia (ms)	マレシ?	''Mareshia
Seattle (en)	シアト?	Shiatoru
Shanghai (en)	シャンハ?	Shanhai		上海, Shanghai (cn)
Philippines (en)	フィリピ?	Firipin		Pilipinas (fil)

See also

• Japanese phonology for pronunciation.
• Hiragana
• Historical kana usage for a discussion of pre-war kana spelling
• Rōmaji for a comparison of romanization systems
• Taiwanese kana, katakana-based writing system once used for Taiwanese language

External links

• Katakana code chart at Unicode.org
• Real Kana Practice katakana using different typefaces
• katakana stroke order diagrams on nihongoresources.com
• Animations showing how to write katakana
• Learn Katakana, simple game to learn Katakana alphabet.