So far, we have covered Japanese Hiragana’s(ひらがな) in Part 1 through Part 3 of the “Let’s learn how to read Japanese” series. Part 4 will be on Katakana(かたかな). Katakana is another writing system in Japanese. Katakana’s are used to express foreign language words or words that originate from other countries.  I will discuss the examples below.

Katakana’s have exactly the same pronunciation as Hiragana’s, by representing one sound for each letter. Some of them look similar between Hiragana and Katakana; however, for the most part, they do look different.

 

Information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana

Gojūon – Katakana characters with nucleus

	a	i	u	e	o
∅	ア	イ	ウ	エ	オ
K	カ	キ	ク	ケ	コ
S	サ	シ	ス	セ	ソ
T	タ	チ	ツ	テ	ト
N	ナ	ニ	ヌ	ネ	ノ
H	ハ	ヒ	フ	ヘ	ホ
M	マ	ミ	ム	メ	モ
Y	ヤ		ユ		ヨ
R	ラ	リ	ル	レ	ロ
W	ワ	ヰ		ヱ	ヲ

Do you remember the Dakuon(だくおん), Han-dakuon(はんだくおん), and Yo-on(ようおん) & Sokuon(そくおん) in Hiragana? In Katakana, We have exactly the same 4 sounds to use as well.  Rules are similar to Hiragana.

• Dakuon(だくおん) has ゛ attached to the basic Katakana, such as バ(ba)、ビ(bi)、ブ(bu)
• Han-dakuon(はんだくおん) has ゜attached, just like パ(pa)、ピ(pi)、プ(pu)
• Yo-on is the smaller letters, such as , ャ、ュ、ョ.
• Sokuon is the smaller version of ツ、which is ッ.

So, let’s try reading Katakana’s now.

ライオン

トラック

オレンジ

ピンク

クラス

ギター

ペン

アメリカ

カナダ

イギリス

スペイン

ブーツ

The way you would read is as follows:

ライオン (raion)-lion

トラック (track)-truck

オレンジ(orenji)-orange

ピンク(pinku)-Pink

クラス(kurasu)-class

ギター(gita-)-guitter

ペン(pen)-pen

アメリカ(america)-America

カナダ(kanada)-Canada

イギリス(igirisu)-England

スペイン(spein)-Spain

ブーツ(bu-tsu)-boots

You probably noticed that above words have very similar pronunciation as English words. You might be also wondering when to use Katakana exactly.  Well, you would want to use Katakana when expressing:

• Foreign names (Non-Japanese names), トーマス(Thomas)、ベン(Ben)、アレックス(Alex)
• Foreign countries, タイ(Thailand)、ベトナム(Vietnam)、ブラジル(Brazil)- However, there are some exceptions, such as for 中国(China),台湾(Taiwan), we don’t use Katakana.
• Foreign language words in general, バナナ(Banana)、ナイフ(Knife)、コーヒー(Coffee)
• Sounds including animal sounds, ワンワン、ニャーオ、ブー

Regarding the last item above, “sound”, I will cover them in detail in a separate article.

As usual, here is the short video for your quick review on Hiragana & Katakana.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zxuy6eojZY

Have a great weekend, everyone!