Japanese Writing : Learn Katakana – Part Five
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On this part of the Japanese writing course, we’re only going to introduce a few new characters. The reason is that we’ve got a special character lined up for you to learn afterwards.
タ – ta
The original kanji for ‘ta’ is 多, meaning ‘many; frequent’. It is used in the name 博多 – hakata – a cosmopolitan city on the southern Japanese island of Kyuushuu.
チ – chi
It is very clear how the character for ‘chi’ was derived from the kanji 千, meaning ‘one thousand’. Interestingly, if you have seen the movie Spirited Away
ツ – tsu
Please be very careful with this character. The third stroke must go in the correct direction. As mentioned with ン – n – there is a similar character where the only difference is the direction of this stroke. Confusing? Yes, but that’s what we’re given, so we have to work with it!
テ – te
The ‘te’ character comes from 天, ‘heaven’. Notice that the top horizontal line is slightly shorter than the lower one. It’s very similar, but not quite the same, as the Japanese symbol for the post office, 〒.
ミ – mi
The character for ‘mi’ comes from the kanji 三, meaning three. Why does it slope downwards when written as katakana? We don’t know. But what we do know is that you can draw a nice shooting start with it… ☆ミ
Time for some Japanese words… food and drink…
ステーキ – suteeki – steak
タルト – taruto – tart
チキンカレー – chikin karee – chicken curry
ミルク – miruku
スターター – sutaataa – starter
ウエーター – ueetaa – waiter
And some more Japanese words…
カーテン – kaaten – curtain
イースター – iisutaa – Easter
スーツ – suutsu – suit
スーツケース – suutsukeesu – suitcase
テント – tento – tent
テスト – tesuto – test
タイツ – taitsu – tights
ツアー – tsuaa – tour
タオル – taoru – towel
By now, you should be able to tell that the banner at the top reads ランチ – ranchi. However, the meaning may not be so clear. This is taken from a larger sign saying ‘ranchi baikingu’ – a transliteration of ‘lunch viking’, or an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet. The ‘viking’ connection comes, I guess, from the Smörgåsbord
Special Character – ッ – ‘Small tsu’
Like the vowel lengthener we learnt in lesson one, there’s another character with a special meaning in katakana.
A small ‘tsu’ character – ッ – doubles the consonant of the following character. The sound this makes is often like a small pause; consider how the ‘t’ in the phrase ‘hat trick’ sounds different to the name ‘Patrick’. Writing the small tsu is exactly the same as the large one, but it sits at about half the height of the full size character.
This doubled consonant is quite important in Japanese, whereas in English it wouldn’t matter so much. In Japanese, for example, コク – koku – is the word for ‘country’ (though it would almost never be written using katakana). コック – kokku – however is the word for a male chicken.
Japanese writing using the small tsu – ッ – character
Here are a few katakana words making use of the small tsu character. Note that a doubled ‘chi’ tends to be written ‘tchi’, although you may see ‘cchi’.
コック – kokku – cock
スケッチ – suketchi – sketch
トラック – torakku – truck
トラックスーツ – torakkusuutsu – tracksuit
The worksheet for this lesson is availble for download : Japanese Writing – Katakana Worksheet Part 5
Well done!
Soon you’ll be half-way through the course. But you should know that you’ve already learnt 43 Japanese words. Below are the 25 from previous lessons; see how many you can still read and remember…
Lesson 1 : カラオケ
Lesson 2 : カメラ ・ Eメール ・ ラーメン
Lesson 3 : オーケストラ ・ キー ・ キス ・ カレーライス ・ ケーキ ・ スキー ・ レスト ・ ラン ・ スカート ・ メートル ・ イーメール ・ オンライン ・ スケート ・ トースト
Lesson 4 : アルコール ・ ウイルス ・ ウール ・ エアコン ・ ココア ・ コーラ ・ コート ・ クラス
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