Katakana characters of Japanese

Table of Katakana

The following tables include all Hiragana characters.

As you can see, all Hiragana characters correspond to Japanese syllable like Hiragana.
All Japanese words and sentenses consist of only the syllables.
(Please read the page of Pronunciation of Japanese language.
The orange-colored and green-colored parts are the syllables that the pronunciation has been changed for a long time.)

Details of Katakana

Notation of the pronunciations that Japanese doesn't have

Basically, Katakana is written as detectable pronunciation by Japanese ear.
Therefore, we must write even the pronunciations which are not in Japanese.

For the purpose, some combinations of Katakana are prepared.
The below table includes such characters.

There is not "l" in Japanese.
So, it is written using "r".

"Long" and "wrong" are the same in the notation of Japanese.

And, there are special characters for "v".
But the characters with "b" are more often used than such characters.

Long vowel

About long vowel in foreign language, the bar character like a hyphen is written just after the vowel which is pronounced long.

But, Japanese can be written vertically.
At that time, the bar character is written vertically.

The followings are the examples of the word written in Katanaka.

news = nyūsu = ニュース
internet = intānetto = インターネット
elevator = erebētā = エレベーター
violin = baiorin / vaiorin = バイオリン / ヴァイオリン

Because foreign words are long when they are written in katakana, Japanese people shorten the words which are often used in the life.

smartphone = sumātohon > sumaho = スマホ
supermarket = sūpāmāketto > sūpā = スーパー
convenience store = konbiniensu sutoā > konbini = コンビニ
personal computer = pāsonaru konpyūtā > pasokon = パソコン

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