Introducing Katakana

Congratulations on completing the first 10 days of the course! You should now have a firm grasp on Hiragana so, from lesson 11 onwards, we will start to introduce you to Katakana.  

KATAKANA

Katakana, meaning “fragmentary kana,” are used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords and onomatopoeia. Like hiragana, the basic alphabet has 5 singular vowels, 40 consonant-vowels and 1 singular consonant. Katakana usage is sometimes similar to italics in English, where it is used for transcription of foreign language words into Japanese. 

Gairaigo (外来語), or loan words, are all written in katakana, such as バナナ, or banana. Foreign names are similarly also written in katakana. If you have a non-Japanese name, you should learn how to write your name in katakana first.

As an overview of the entire Katakana alphabet, we have created this helpful chart which also includes stroke order for each character.

You can also download the Katakana table from here.