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KATAKANA

LANGUAGE Hiragana Kanji Loan words Japanese on computers

Around the 9th century, the Japanese developed an own writing system based on syllables: Hiragana and Katakana (together: Kana). Of the two kana systems, hiragana is cursive while katakana characters are quite angular. Hiragana and Katakana each consist of 46 signs which originally were kanji but were strongly simplified over the centuries. When looking at a Japanese text, one can indeed clearly distinguish between two kinds of signs: the complicated kanji and the simpler kana signs. Among the syllables are 5 vowels (a i u e o). The rest are syllables combined by one of these vowels with a consonant (ka ki ku ke ko ra ri ru ...). One exception is the n. In addition, many syllables can be softened or hardened by adding two small strokes or a small circle in the top right corner next to the character. Katakana is mainly used for writing loan words and the names of persons and geographical places that can't be written in kanji. Katakana table

KATAKANA Kana Web (Thomas Gantz Homepage) General information including audio files. Usa-chan teaches Kana (Katmekat) General information and flash card quiz. Japanese ABC (Yukihiro Yabuta's Home Page) Quickly loaded kana tables. No links yet.