Katakana

Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Katakana shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Katakana offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Katakana at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Katakana? Wrong! If the Katakana is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about Katakana then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Katakana? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Katakana and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Katakana wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your Katakana then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Katakana site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about Katakana, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your Katakana, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

{{Infobox WS|name=Katakana
カタカナ|type=Syllabary, [Okinawan language and Ainu language|time=~800 A.D. to the present|fam1=Kanji|sisters=[Hiragana, Hentaigana [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 Kana#Collation, the old-fashioned iroha ordering, and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.

Usage In modern Japanese, katakana are most often used for Transcription (linguistics) of words from foreign languages (called gairaigo). For example, "television" is written . Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names and foreign place and personal names. For example America (USA) is written アメリカ Amerika (America has its own kanji (ateji) or for short, which literally means "Rice Country").

Katakana are also used for onomatopoeia, letters used to represent sounds, for example , 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 (typography), 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 Japanese 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 language 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 (linguistics) Char 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 (ramen) 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 language-derived readings) of a kanji in a kanji dictionary.

Some Japanese 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 ryu-ryu (school) of shakuhachi, and in sankyoku ensembles with koto (musical instrument), shamisen, and shakuhachi.

Orthography Foreign phrases are sometimes transliterated with a Interpunct#Japanese called 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 and tategaki, or horizontal text, and vertical in Yokogaki and 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 Consonant length, 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.){]|-bgcolor="#BECFEB" valign=top align="center"!ア a!イ i!ウ u!エ e!オ o!bgcolor="#D4D4D4" ] ka|キ ki] ku|ケ ke] ko|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|キャ kya|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|キュ kyu|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|キョ kyo

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|サ sa] shi|ス su] se|ソ so] ta|チ chi] tsu|テ te] to|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|チャ cha|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|チュ chu|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|チョ cho

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|ナ na] ni|ヌ nu] ne|ノ no] ha|ヒ hi] fu|ヘ he] ho|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|ヒャ hya|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|ヒュ hyu|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|ヒョ hyo

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|マ ma] mi|ム mu] me|モ mo] ya|bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||ユ yu] yo|bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|ラ ra] ri|ル ru] re|ロ ro] wa|ヰ wi] we|ヲ wo 1] n|bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-|colspan="8"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|ガ ga] gi|グ gu] ge|ゴ go] za|ジ ji] zu|ゼ ze] zo|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|ジャ ja|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|ジュ ju|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|ジョ jo

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|ダ da] (ji)|ヅ (zu)] de|ド do] ba|ビ bi] bu|ベ be] bo|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|ビャ bya|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|ビュ byu|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|ビョ byo

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|パ pa] pi|プ pu] pe|ポ po|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|ピャ pya|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|ピュ pyu|bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|ピョ pyo

|-|colspan="8"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"||||||bgcolor="#F3F5DE"||bgcolor="#F3F5DE"||bgcolor="#F3F5DE"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#F3F5DE"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#F3F5DE"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#F3F5DE"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|| |bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"|bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||||||||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"| ||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|-bgcolor="#E7F5DE" valign=top align="center"| ||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"||bgcolor="#E9E9E9"|

|}

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.

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, Half-width kana and fullwidth . 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 Extended Unix Code, Unicode and Shift-JIS have halfwidth Katakana code as well as fullwidth. By contrast, ISO/IEC 2022 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 :{||- align="center"| || ||0||1||2||3||4||5||6||7||8||9||A||B||C||D||E||F|- align="center"||30A|| ||゠||ァ||ア||ィ||イ||ゥ||ウ||ェ||エ||ォ||オ||カ||ガ||キ||ギ||ク|- align="center"||30B|| ||グ||ケ||ゲ||コ||ゴ||サ||ザ||シ||ジ||ス||ズ||セ||ゼ||ソ||ゾ||タ|- align="center"||30C|| ||ダ||チ||ヂ||ッ||ツ||ヅ||テ||デ||ト||ド||ナ||ニ||ヌ||ネ||ノ||ハ|- align="center"||30D|| ||バ||パ||ヒ||ビ||ピ||フ||ブ||プ||ヘ||ベ||ペ||ホ||ボ||ポ||マ||ミ|- align="center"||30E|| ||ム||メ||モ||ャ||ヤ||ュ||ユ||ョ||ヨ||ラ||リ||ル||レ||ロ||ヮ||ワ|- align="center"||30F|| ||ヰ||ヱ||ヲ||ン||ヴ||ヵ||ヶ||ヷ||ヸ||ヹ||ヺ||・||ー||ヽ||ヾ||ヿ|}

Halfwidth equivalents to the fullwidth katakana also exist. These are encoded within the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block (U+FF00–U+FFEF) , starting at U+FF65 and ending at U+FF9F (characters U+FF61–U+FF64 are halfwidth punctuation marks):{||- align="center"| || ||0||1||2||3||4||5||6||7||8||9||A||B||C||D||E||F|- align="center"||FF6|| ||｠||｡||｢||｣||､||･||ｦ||ｧ||ｨ||ｩ||ｪ||ｫ||ｬ||ｭ||ｮ||ｯ|- align="center"||FF7|| ||ｰ||ｱ||ｲ||ｳ||ｴ||ｵ||ｶ||ｷ||ｸ||ｹ||ｺ||ｻ||ｼ||ｽ||ｾ||ｿ|- align="center"||FF8|| ||ﾀ||ﾁ||ﾂ||ﾃ||ﾄ||ﾅ||ﾆ||ﾇ||ﾈ||ﾉ||ﾊ||ﾋ||ﾌ||ﾍ||ﾎ||ﾏ|- align="center"||FF9|| ||ﾐ||ﾑ||ﾒ||ﾓ||ﾔ||ﾕ||ﾖ||ﾗ||ﾘ||ﾙ||ﾚ||ﾛ||ﾜ||ﾝ||ﾞ||ﾟ|}

Code points 32D0 to 32FE list Circled Katakana. Note: A circled ン is missing{||- align="center"| || ||0||1||2||3||4||5||6||7||8||9||A||B||C||D||E||F|- align="center"||32D|| || ㋐ || ㋑ || ㋒ || ㋓ || ㋔ || ㋕ || ㋖ || ㋗ || ㋘ || ㋙ || ㋚ || ㋛ || ㋜ || ㋝ || ㋞ || ㋟|- align="center"||32E|| ||㋠ || ㋡ || ㋢ || ㋣ || ㋤ || ㋥ || ㋦ || ㋧ || ㋨ || ㋩ || ㋪ || ㋫ || ㋬ || ㋭ || ㋮ || ㋯|- align="center"||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) exists for Ainu language support. These characters are used mainly for the Ainu language only:

{| style="text-align:center"|-| || ||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||ㇿ|}

Example transcriptions of Katakana and foreign languages Medicine {|class="wikitable"! width="150px" | Original word! width="150px" | Katakana! width="150px" | Rōmaji|-|Vitamin |ビタミン|Bitamin|-|Mineral |ミネラル|Mineraru|-|Calcium |カルシウム|Karushiumu|-|Hormone |ホルモン|Horumon|}

Computing {|class="wikitable" width="100%"! width="150px" | Original word! width="150px" | Katakana! width="150px" | Rōmaji!Kanji and other words|||-|Mouse |マウス|Mausu||-|Keyboard |キーボード|Kiibōdo||-|Display |ディスプレイ|Disupurei|画面 gamen|-|Pointer |ポインタ|Pointa||-|Programming |プログラミング|Puroguramingu||-|Software |ソフトウェア|Sofutouea||-|Hardware |ハードウェア|Hādouea||-|Operating system |オペレーティング・システム|Operētingu shisutemu|基本ソフト kihonsofuto OS ōesu|-|Internet |インターネット|Intānetto||-|Web |ウェブ|Uebu||}

Names {|class="wikitable"|+from English names|-! width="150px" | Original word! width="150px" | Katakana! width="150px" | Rōmaji|-|John |ジョン|Jon|-|George |ジョージ|Jōji|-|Marie |マリー|Marii|-|Michael |マイケル|Maikeru|}

{|class="wikitable"|+from German names|-|width="150px" | Maria |width="150px" | マリア|width="150px" | Maria|-|Michael |ミハエル, ミヒャエル|Mihaeru, Mihyaeru|}

Regions {|class="wikitable"! width="150px" | Original word! width="150px" | Katakana! width="150px" | Rōmaji!Kanji|-|America |アメリカ|Amerika|米国 beikoku|-|Latin America |ラテンアメリカ|Raten Amerika|中南米 chūnambei|-|Europe |ヨーロッパ|Yōroppa|欧州 ōshū|-|Asia |アジア|Ajia|亜州 ashū|-|Africa |アフリカ|Afurika|阿州 ashū|-|Oceania |オセアニア|Oseania|大洋州 taiyōshū|}

Nations and cities {|class="wikitable"! width="150px" | Original word! width="150px" | Katakana! width="150px" | Rōmaji! English name! Local name|-|New York |ニューヨーク|Nyū Yōku|||-|Los Angeles |ロサンゼルス|Rosanzerusu|||-|Canada |カナダ|Kanada|||-|Toronto |トロント|Toronto|||-|Argentina |アルゼンチン|Aruzenchin|||-|Buenos Aires |ブエノスアイレス|Buenosu Airesu|||-|Brazil |ブラジル|Burajiru||Brasil |-|London |ロンドン|Rondon|||-|Finland |フィンランド|Finrando|||-|France |フランス|Furansu|||-|Paris |パリ|Pari|||-|Singapore |シンガポール|Shingapōru|||-|Deutschland |ドイツ|Doitsu|Germany ||-|Berlin |ベルリン|Berurin|||-|Portugal |ポルトガル|Porutogaru|||-|Lisbon |リスボン|Risbon||Lisboa |-|Lithuania |リトアニア|Rituania|Lithuania |Lietuva |-|Olanda / Holanda / Holland |オランダ|Oranda|Holland / The Netherlands |Holland / Nederland |-|Poland |ポーランド|Pōrando||Polska |-|Italia |イタリア|Itaria|Italy ||-|Roma |ローマ|Rōma|Rome ||-|Mexico |メキシコ|Mekishiko||Mexico |-|Madrid |マドリッド|Madoriddo|||-|Russia |ロシア|Roshia||Росси́я, Rossiya |-|India |インド|Indo||Bhārat |-|Indonesia |インドネシア|Indoneshia|||-|Malaysia |マレシア|Mareshia|||-|Seattle |シアトル|Shiatoru|||-|Shanghai |シャンハイ|Shanhai||上海, Shanghai |-|Philippines |フィリピン|Firipin||Pilipinas |}

See also

Japanese phonology for pronunciation.
Hiragana
Historical kana usage for a discussion of pre-war kana spelling
Romaji 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.

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 (linguistics) Char siu, roast pork
シューマイ (焼売), shūmai, from Cantonese siu maai, a kind of dim sum.

Japanese phonology for pronunciation.
Hiragana
Historical kana usage for a discussion of pre-war kana spelling
Romaji 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.

katakana from FOLDOC
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Japan With Kids - Katakana Chart
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Japanese Katakana T-Shirts / Hoodies and Cool T-Shirts / Hoodies
Create a Custom Japanese Katakana T-shirt. Just choose any simple short phrase or name you like and ... Japanese Katakana T-Shirts

Katakana
Syllable based writing system of the Japanese language. ... When staying at a ryokan, which (Japanese style) meals would you prefer to be included?

Katakana Writing Tutor
If you are seeing this page, your browser doesn't support frames. That unfortunately also means that your browser doesn't support animated GIF files, either, since the only ...

The Kanji SITE - A guide for students of Japanese Kanji
Katakana characters are more angular than their hiragana counterparts and are used for ...

Katakana
Katakana: Foreign words are spelled with Katakana. Katakana is deceptively difficult because it is open to interperetation. You have to THINK like a Japanese ...

Katakana Lessons - katakana chart
Katakana Lessons - katakana chart ... Katakana Lessons. Katakana Chart. Before we start, I want to remind you about Japanese writing.

Katakana Games!
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