Katakana - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Use

One writes in katakana:

words of foreign origin; they are generally words English:

ビール bīru : “beer”,
フランス Furansu : “France”,
ズボン zubon : “pants” (this word comes however from French “underskirt”);

onomatopoeias or expressive, very frequent short notes in Japanese (see also with the article Manga ):

フアフア fuafua : noise of what is tender and marrowy,
ペコペコ pekopeko : noise of gargouillis,
コケコッコ kokekokko : “cock-a-doodle-doo”;

names of animals in the scientific works; in the everyday usage, one rather uses the Kanji or the Hiragana:

イルカ iruka : “dolphin”,
サル saru : “monkey”;

Certain Japanese words can be written in katakana to produce a particular effect, like softening the direction of them. For example, ダメ lady , which mean “that is not appropriate” or “it is not possible”, potentially offensive term, can be written in katakana to appear less brutal.

words highlighted, with the manner of our Italic.

Table of the katakana

The romanisation is that of Hepburn.

Other characters

ー : mark prolongation of the sound. This mark is placed after the vowels to note that they are long (see below);

ヽ : Mark of iteration. Is used it to avoid repeating same a kana. For example, クク could be written クヽ ;

ヾ : mark iteration for a sound syllable. Thus, one can shorten ググ in グヾ .

Wide characters

These combinations of katakana are used to note foreign words using of the phonemes which do not exist in Japanese.

This table does not present all the combinations. Some are indeed very rare or of criticized use.

Orthography

The katakana can be used to write Japanese words; in this case the orthographical rules are the same ones as for the Hiragana, in particular for the lengthening of the vowels ( トウキョウ = Toukyou → Tōkyō ). It thus should be noted that the Rōmaji - the romanisation of Japanese - can mask certain facts inherent in the writing in kana.

One uses as for the hiragana the diacritic ゛ ( dakuten ) and ゜ ( handakuten ) to form derived syllables or nigori ( カ ka + ゛ → ガ ga ).

Although this writing is not bicameral, it makes use of characters of small size. Those are used to create syllables which one could not note, if not, directly (that these syllables exist or not in Japanese). The kana which precedes then does not have a full syllabic value (one reads them without vowel). For example, ニャ is not read niya (that one would write ニヤ ) but nya . Because of phonetic evolutions, it is necessary to know equivalences which are not inevitably obvious: thus, チョ is worth phonologiquement chi-yo → chyo but is read cho . Moreover, the ツ , is useful as in hiragana, to note the geminated consonants: ベッド is thus read beddo , “reads” (of English bed ) and not betsudo .

When the katakana are used to transcribe foreign words or onomatopoeias, they follow a series of additional rules:

first of all, the lengthening of the vowel is done systematically, for all the vowels, with the sign of lengthening of vowel (horizontal line in the case of the horizontal writing, vertical line in the case of the vertical writing), for example: フリー百科事典 , furī hyakkajiten ( free encyclopedia ) where フリー is in fact the transcription in Japanese phonetics of the English word free ;

of new combinations with the kana of small size was invented, to make it possible to better transcribe phonemes which do not exist in Japanese; thus, fu is returned by フ , and for the other vowels one uses this kana followed small kana of the vowel: ファ F , フィ fi , フェ Fe , フォ fo ;

the kana ツ tsu is used in the same way: ツァ tsa , ツィ tsi , ツェ tse , ツォ tso ;
to retranscribe the consonant v absent from Japanese, one uses the special kana ヴ considering and, according to the same method, one has ヴァ goes , ヴィ VI , ヴェ ve and ヴォ vo (but this series is used little; in general one is satisfied with Ba , Bi , drunk , Be and bo in the place);

the kana ウ U is used for: ウィ wi , ウェ we , ウォ wo ( wu does not exist; one uses quite simply ウ in the place; wa has its clean standard kana: ワ );

the syllables with CH (delivery like tch French ), HS (delivery as CH French ) are written:

for the vowels has , U , O , according to the rules standards like the hiragana, i.e. by writing the kana with I followed by small a ya , yu or yo .

for the vowel E , while placing small a kana E after the syllable in I : チェ che , シェ she and ジェ I ;

the syllables Ti and di are returned by you or of followed by small a I : ティ Ti and ディ di ;
finally, as in hiragana, the syllables with the Semi-voyelle for the vowels has there , U and O is possible for all the consonants having a syllable in I (except ji , shi and chi ) by adding to him small a ya , yu or yo .

Examples of real words:

デューティ・フリー = dyūti furī = duty free
ウィキペディア = Uikipedia = Wikipedia .

Direction of writing of the katakana

The katakana, just like the Chinese characters, have a definite direction of writing. Writing order of the features which takes its importance at the time of Japanese Calligraphie.

Origins

They were formed by insulation of part of a homophonous Kanji: they are thus simplified forms of Chinese Caractères, just as the hiragana. They were created to return the writing of Japanese accessible to those which did not know the Chinese writing. Appeared little as time after the hiragana (at the time Heian), they were used at the origin with the Buddhist students to note the pronunciation of unknown Chinese natures.

The following table gives, for each kana (on the left), the kanji from which it draws its origin (on the right):

Others

code ISO 15924: Kana

kana ;
Hiragana ;
Furigana ;
Kanji .

External bonds

Convertisseur Romanji-Kana Transforms the rōmaji into kana
Apprendre the katakana and the hiragana
Furigana.jp Convertit the Web pages or Japanese texts into three various formats to facilitate the reading of the characters: furigana, kana or rōmaji
Realkana.com To learn the katakana and the hiragana by a exercise from memorizing

Simple: Katakana Zh-classical: 片假名

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