Katakana (カタカナ)

Basically…

Katakana is one of Japan’s alphabets.

A little Deeper

There are actually three alphabets in Japanese. They are:

Hiragana (ひらがな)
・Katakana (カタカナ)
Kanji (漢字)

Katakana is like the ABC’s in English. it is very similar to Hiragana.

It is used mostly for words from other countries outside of Japan. Katakana is also used for words representing sounds, emphasizing words, and for scientific vocabulary.

https://japaneseuniverse.com/2024/02/18/pac-man-in-japaneseconcepts-behind-development-to-global-icon/

There are about 50 characters. They look like this:

カメラ

Which says kamera. Yes, that is the same as camera in English.

What do they sound like?

Every character has one sound.
For example, look at the three Katakana below:

is pronounced ka
is pronounced me
is pronounced ra

Put them together

カメラ is pronounced kamera.

Putting it all Together

So, when you hear Katakana, just think of Japan’s Alphabet used to write words from other countries.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.