Japanese Writing : Learn Katakana – Part One
Katakana is one of the ‘alphabets’ used in Japanese writing. You can see an overview of all the systems used at our Japanese symbols page. As mentioned there, katakana is used to write words borrowed from foreign languages, and so learning this single japanese writing system will open up a huge vocabulary immediately. The katakana characters are also used in advertising and to emphasise words – similar to italics in English.
Before you start, please download our blank chart to fill in as you go along:
Let’s Begin Learning Japanese Writing
Japanese has an interesting way of writing. Each ‘letter’ is actually a consonant sound followed by a vowel sound. The exceptions are the pure vowels (a, i, u, e, o) and the letter ‘n’ which can stand alone. Unlike English, if you want to make a ‘ka’ sound, you don’t write a ‘k’ followed by an ‘a’, you simply use the ‘ka’ character.
Notice that the vowels in Japanese writing come in a different order to English. You’ll see that the consonants do too.
Your First Few Katakana
By learning just a few katakana characters, you will be doing real Japanese writing in no time! Let’s start with:
カ – ka
The ‘ka’ character came from the kanji 加 meaning ‘addition’ or ‘increase’. It is very similar to the same hiragana character, so care must be taken if you’re learning hiragana too!
ラ – ra
The ‘ra’ character is a hugely simplified version of the kanji 良, meaning ‘good’.
オ – o
The ‘o’ character is a simplification of 於, meaning ‘in, at or on’. It shouldn’t be confused with the kanji 才 – sai – meaning ‘years of age’.
ケ – ke
The ‘ke’ character is a simplification (or more accurately, a stylisation) of the kanji 介, a hugely diverse character meaning ‘jammed in; shellfish; meditate; concern oneself with’
Practice writing these Japanese katakana characters
Download our worksheet where you can trace over the characters, and then continue writing into the blank boxes. Once you’ve practiced each character, you can write them into the appropriate boxes on your chart.
Download Worksheet Here : Japanese Writing – Katakana Worksheet Part 1
When you’ve done the worksheet and written on your chart, go back back and have a look at the picture at the top of the page again… Congratulations! What was random squiggles at the start is now easily identifiable as a カラオケ – karaoke – bar (this one in Tokyo’s West Shinjuku district, to be precise! I had the photo because next door is the Sun Flower building which houses Shinjuku’s “all you can deep-fry” buffet; with a deep fat fryer sunk into every table… terrifying!)
So now you see how easy it is, join us next time to find a kamera (camera), and eat some ramen (instant noodles).
Ganbatte kudasai! (please do your best)