Katakana - WikiHQ

is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji).

The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more complex kanji. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable (strictly mora) in the Japanese language is represented by one character or kana in each system. Each kana represents either a vowel such as "a" (katakana ア); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka" (katakana カ); or "n" (katakana ン), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds like English m, n or ng () or like the nasal vowels of Portuguese or Galician.

In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for Japanese words not covered by kanji and for grammatical inflections, the katakana syllabary usage is comparable to italics in English; specifically, it is used for transcription of foreign-language words into Japanese and the writing of loan words (collectively gairaigo); for emphasis; to represent onomatopoeia; for technical and scientific terms; and for names of plants, animals, minerals and often Japanese companies.

Katakana evolved from Japanese Buddhist monks transliterating Chinese texts into Japanese.

Writing system

Overview

{| align=right border="0" cellpadding="0" style="width: 14em; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom:1em"

{| class="wikitable"

|+ Katakana gojūon

! a !! i !! u !! e !! o

|- align=center

!title="no onset"|

|<big>ア</big>||<big>イ</big>||<big>ウ</big>||<big>エ</big>||<big>オ</big>

|- align=center

|<big>カ</big>||<big>キ</big>||<big>ク</big>||<big>ケ</big>||<big>コ</big>

|- align=center

|<big>サ</big>||<big>シ</big>||<big>ス</big>||<big>セ</big>||<big>ソ</big>

|- align=center

|<big>タ</big>||<big>チ</big>||<big>ツ</big>||<big>テ</big>||<big>ト</big>

|- align=center

|<big>ナ</big>||<big>ニ</big>||<big>ヌ</big>||<big>ネ</big>||<big>ノ</big>

|- align=center

|<big>ハ</big>||<big>ヒ</big>||<big>フ</big>||<big>ヘ</big>||<big>ホ</big>

|- align=center

|<big>マ</big>||<big>ミ</big>||<big>ム</big>||<big>メ</big>||<big>モ</big>

|- align=center

|<big>ヤ</big>|| ||<big>ユ</big>|| For example, "ice cream" is written . Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names, foreign places, and foreign personal names. For example, the United States is usually referred to as , rather than in its ateji kanji spelling of .

Katakana are also used for onomatopoeia, Homo sapiens, as a species, is written , rather than its kanji .

Katakana are often (but not always) used for transcription of Japanese company names. For example, Suzuki is written , and Toyota is written . As these are common family names, Suzuki being the second most common in Japan, using katakana helps distinguish company names from surnames in writing. Katakana are commonly used on signs, advertisements, and hoardings (i.e., billboards), for example, , , or . Words the writer wishes to emphasize in a sentence are also sometimes written in katakana, mirroring the usage of italics in European languages. Katakana is also used to denote the fact that a character is speaking a foreign language, and what is displayed in katakana is only the Japanese "translation" of their words.

Some frequently used words may also be written in katakana in dialogs to convey an informal, conversational tone. Some examples include ("manga"), aitsu ("that guy or girl; he/him; she/her"), baka ("fool"), etc.

Words with difficult-to-read kanji are sometimes written in katakana (hiragana is also used for this purpose). This phenomenon is often seen with medical terminology. For example, in the word hifuka ("dermatology"), the second kanji, , is considered difficult to read, and thus the word hifuka is commonly written or , mixing kanji and katakana. Similarly, difficult-to-read kanji such as gan ("cancer") are often written in katakana or hiragana.

Katakana is also used for traditional musical notations, as in the Tozan-ryū of shakuhachi, and in sankyoku ensembles with koto, shamisen and shakuhachi.

Some instructors teaching Japanese as a foreign language "introduce katakana after the students have learned to read and write sentences in hiragana without difficulty and know the rules." Most students who have learned hiragana "do not have great difficulty in memorizing" katakana as well. Other instructors introduce katakana first, because these are used with loanwords. This gives students a chance to practice reading and writing kana with meaningful words. This was the approach taken by the influential American linguistics scholar Eleanor Harz Jorden in Japanese: The Written Language (parallel to Japanese: The Spoken Language).thumb|300px|left|A page of the [[Meiji Constitution written exclusively with kyūjitai and katakana]]

Ainu

Katakana is commonly used by Japanese linguists to write the Ainu language. In Ainu katakana usage, the consonant that comes at the end of a syllable is represented by a small version of a katakana that corresponds to that final consonant followed by a vowel (for details of which vowel, please see the table at Ainu language § Special katakana for the Ainu language). For instance, the Ainu word is represented by ( [u followed by small pu]). Ainu also uses three handakuten modified katakana: () and either or (). In Unicode, the Katakana Phonetic Extensions block (U+31F0–U+31FF) exists for Ainu language support. These characters are used for the Ainu language only.

Taiwanese

Taiwanese kana (タイ15px ヲァヌ15px ギイ15px カア15px ビェン15px) is a katakana-based writing system once used to write Taiwanese Hokkien while Taiwan was under Japanese rule. It functioned as a phonetic guide for Chinese characters, much like furigana in Japanese or pinyin in Mandarin. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, including Hakka and Formosan languages.

Unlike Japanese or Ainu, Taiwanese kana uses a methodology similar to bopomofo, with kana serving as initials, vowel medials and consonant finals, marked with tonal marks. A dot below the initial kana represents aspirated consonants, and チ, ツ, サ, セ, ソ, ウ and オ with a superpositional bar represent sounds found only in Taiwanese.

Okinawan

Katakana is used as a phonetic guide for the Okinawan language, unlike the various other systems to represent Okinawan, which use hiragana with extensions. The system was devised by the Okinawa Center of Language Study of the University of the Ryukyus. It uses many extensions and yōon to show the many non-Japanese sounds of Okinawan.

Table of katakana

This is a table of katakana together with their Hepburn romanization and rough IPA transcription for their use in Japanese. Katakana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojūon kana without them.

Characters , , , and look very similar in print except for the slant and stroke shape. These differences in slant and shape are more prominent when written with an ink brush.

Extended katakana

Using small versions of the five vowel kana, many digraphs have been devised, mainly to represent the sounds in words of other languages.

Digraphs with orange backgrounds are the general ones used for loanwords or foreign places or names, and those with blue backgrounds are used for more accurate transliterations of foreign sounds, both suggested by the Cabinet of Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Katakana combinations with yellow backgrounds are suggested by the American National Standards Institute and the British Standards Institution as possible uses. Ones with purple backgrounds appear on the 1974 version of the Hyōjun-shiki formatting.

Pronunciations are shown in Hepburn romanization.

{| border="0" style="width:80%;" cellpadding="2px" cellspacing="2px"

| -a

| -ya

| -i

| -u

| -yu

| -e

| -o

| -yo

|- style="vertical-align:center; background:#9cf; text-align:center;"

|i-

| colspan="2" style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

| style="background:#e1a1ff;" |

| colspan="2" style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

| rowspan="5" |u-

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#eee8aa;" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#e9e9e9;"|

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#e1a1ff;" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#eee8aa;"|

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

|- style="vertical-align:center; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#9cf; text-align:center;"

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#eee8aa;"|

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2" | -

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#eee8aa;"|

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#eee8aa; text-align:center;"

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

| colspan="8" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|ki-

| colspan="6" |

| style="background:#eee8aa;" |

| colspan="2" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|gi-

| colspan="6" |

| style="background:#eee8aa;" |

| colspan="2" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#9cf; text-align:center;"

| rowspan="2" |ku-

| rowspan="2" |

| style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#9cf; text-align:center;"

| style="background:#eee8aa;" |

| colspan="6" style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#eee8aa; text-align:center;"

| rowspan="2" |gu-

| rowspan="2" |

| style="background:#9cf;" |

| style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

| style="background:#eee8aa;" |

| colspan="7" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|k-

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|shi-

| colspan="6" |

| style="background:#fc9;" |

| colspan="2" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|chi-

| colspan="6" |

| style="background:#fc9;" |

| colspan="2" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|ji-

| colspan="6" |

| style="background:#fc9;" |

| colspan="2" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|dji-

| colspan="6" |

| style="background:#e1a1ff;" |

| colspan="2" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|su-

| colspan="3" |

| style="background:#e1a1ff;" |

| colspan="5" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#fc9; text-align:center;"

| rowspan="2" |tsu-

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#9cf;" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#eee8aa;"|

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2"style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|zu-

| colspan="3" |

| style="background:#e1a1ff;" |

| colspan="5" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

| rowspan="2" |dzu-

| rowspan="2" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e7f5de; text-align:center;"

|te-

| style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

| style="background:#fc9;" |

| style="background:#9cf;" |

|style="background:#99CCFF;"|

| colspan="2" style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#9cf; text-align:center;"

|to-

| style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

| colspan="2" style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e7f5de; text-align:center;"

|de-

| style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

| style="background:#fc9;" |

| style="background:#9cf;" |

|style="background:#fc9;"|

| colspan="2" style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#fc9; text-align:center;"

|do-

| style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

| style="background:#99CCFF;" |

| colspan="2" style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|ni-

nu-

| style="background:#eee8aa;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

| rowspan="3" |hi-

| rowspan="3" |

| colspan="5" |

| style="background:#eee8aa;" |

| colspan="2" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

| style="background:#eee8aa;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

| style="background:#eee8aa;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#fc9; text-align:center;"

| rowspan="4" |fu-

| rowspan="4" |

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#eee8aa;"|

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#99CCFF;"|

| rowspan="2" |

| rowspan="2" style="background:#eee8aa;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#eee8aa; text-align:center;"

|style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

| colspan="3" |

| style="background:#e1a1ff;" |

| colspan="2" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|mi-

mu-

| style="background:#eee8aa;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|ri-

ru-

| style="background:#eee8aa;" |

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e1a1ff; text-align:center;"

|r-

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"

|ri-

|- style="vertical-align:top; background:#eee8aa; text-align:center;"

|w-

| style="background:#e9e9e9;" |

History

thumb|Roots of katakana highlighted

thumb|Japanese katakana in a 1873 textbook

Katakana was developed in the 9th century (during the early Heian period) by Buddhist monks in Nara in order to transliterate texts and works of arts from India, by taking parts of man'yōgana characters as a form of shorthand, hence this kana is so-called . For example, comes from the left side of . The adjacent table shows the origins of each katakana: the red markings of the original Chinese character (used as man'yōgana) eventually became each corresponding symbol.

Official documents of the Empire of Japan were written exclusively with kyūjitai and katakana.

Obsolete kana

Variant forms

Katakana have variant forms. For example, 20px(ネ) and 20px(ヰ). However, katakana's variant forms are fewer than hiragana's. Katakana's choices of man'yōgana segments had stabilized early on and established – with few exceptions – an unambiguous phonemic orthography (one symbol per sound) long before the 1900 script regularization.

Polysyllabic kana

Yi, Ye and Wu

Stroke order

The following table shows the method for writing each katakana character. It is arranged in a traditional manner, where characters are organized by the sounds that make them up. The numbers and arrows indicate the stroke order and direction, respectively.

center

Computer encoding

In addition to fonts intended for Japanese text and Unicode catch-all fonts (like Arial Unicode MS), many fonts intended for Chinese (such as MS Song) and Korean (such as Batang) also include katakana.

Hiragana and katakana

In addition to the usual display forms of characters, katakana has a second form, . The half-width forms were originally associated with the JIS X 0201 encoding. Although their display form is not specified in the standard, in practice they were designed to fit into the same rectangle of pixels as Roman letters to enable easy implementation on the computer equipment of the day. This space is narrower than the square space traditionally occupied by Japanese characters, hence the name "half-width". In this scheme, diacritics (dakuten and handakuten) are separate characters. When originally devised, the half-width katakana were represented by a single byte each, as in JIS X 0201, again in line with the capabilities of contemporary computer technology.

In the late 1970s, two-byte character sets such as JIS X 0208 were introduced to support the full range of Japanese characters, including katakana, hiragana and kanji. Their display forms were designed to fit into an approximately square array of pixels, hence the name "full-width". For backward compatibility, separate support for half-width katakana has continued to be available in modern multi-byte encoding schemes such as Unicode, by having two separate blocks of characters – one displayed as usual (full-width) katakana, the other displayed as half-width katakana.

Although often said to be obsolete, the half-width katakana are still used in many systems and encodings. For example, the titles of mini discs can only be entered in ASCII or half-width katakana, and half-width katakana are commonly used in computerized cash register displays, on shop receipts, and Japanese digital television and DVD subtitles. Several popular Japanese encodings such as EUC-JP, Unicode and Shift JIS have half-width katakana code as well as full-width. By contrast, ISO-2022-JP has no half-width katakana, and is mainly used over SMTP and NNTP.

Unicode

Katakana was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0.

The Unicode block for (full-width) katakana is U+30A0–U+30FF.

Encoded in this block along with the katakana are the nakaguro word-separation middle dot, the chōon vowel extender, the katakana iteration marks, and a ligature of コト sometimes used in vertical writing.

Half-width equivalents to the usual full-width katakana also exist in Unicode. These are encoded within the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block (U+FF00–U+FFEF) (which also includes full-width forms of Latin characters, for instance), starting at U+FF65 and ending at U+FF9F (characters U+FF61–U+FF64 are half-width punctuation marks). This block also includes the half-width dakuten and handakuten. The full-width versions of these characters are found in the Hiragana block.

Circled katakana are code points U+32D0–U+32FE in the Enclosed CJK Letters and Months block (U+3200–U+32FF). A circled ン (n) is not included.

Extensions to Katakana for phonetic transcription of Ainu and other languages were added to the Unicode standard in March 2002 with the release of version 3.2.

The Unicode block for Katakana Phonetic Extensions is U+31F0–U+31FF:

Historic and variant forms of Japanese kana characters were added to the Unicode standard in October 2010 with the release of version 6.0.

The Unicode block for Kana Supplement is U+1B000–U+1B0FF:

The Unicode block for Small Kana Extension is U+1B130–U+1B16F:

The Kana Extended-A Unicode block is U+1B100–1B12F. It contains hentaigana (non-standard hiragana) and historic kana characters.

The Kana Extended-B Unicode block is U+1AFF0–1AFFF. It contains kana originally created by Japanese linguists to write Taiwanese Hokkien known as Taiwanese kana.

The CJK Compatibility block contains in the range U+3330-3357 square versions of katakana words, usually measure units or abbreviations of loanwords:

Katakana in other Unicode blocks:

Dakuten and handakuten diacritics are located in the Hiragana block:
U+3099 COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA VOICED SOUND MARK (non-spacing dakuten): ゙
U+309A COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (non-spacing handakuten): ゚
U+309B KATAKANA-HIRAGANA VOICED SOUND MARK (spacing dakuten): ゛
U+309C KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (spacing handakuten): ゜
Two katakana-based emoji are in the Enclosed Ideographic Supplement block:
U+1F201 SQUARED KATAKANA KOKO ('here' sign): 🈁
U+1F202 SQUARED KATAKANA SA ('service' sign): 🈂
A katakana-based Japanese TV symbol from the ARIB STD-B24 standard is in the Enclosed Ideographic Supplement block:
U+1F213 SQUARED KATAKANA DE ('data broadcasting service linked with a main program' symbol): 🈓

Furthermore, as of Unicode , the following combinatory sequences have been explicitly named, despite having no precomposed symbols in the katakana block. Font designers may want to optimize the display of these composed glyphs. Some of them are mostly used for writing the Ainu language, the others are called in Japanese. Other, arbitrary combinations with U+309A handakuten are also possible.

{| class="wikitable"

! colspan="4" | Katakana named sequences Unicode Named Character Sequences Database

! Sequence name

! colspan="2" style="width:20pt" | Codepoints

! style="width:20pt" | Glyph

| KATAKANA LETTER BIDAKUON NGA || U+30AB || U+309A || style="text-align:center;" | カ゚

| KATAKANA LETTER BIDAKUON NGI || U+30AD || U+309A || style="text-align:center;" | キ゚

| KATAKANA LETTER BIDAKUON NGU || U+30AF || U+309A || style="text-align:center;" | ク゚

| KATAKANA LETTER BIDAKUON NGE || U+30B1 || U+309A || style="text-align:center;" | ケ゚

| KATAKANA LETTER BIDAKUON NGO || U+30B3 || U+309A || style="text-align:center;" | コ゚

| KATAKANA LETTER AINU CE || U+30BB || U+309A || style="text-align:center;" | セ゚

| KATAKANA LETTER AINU TU || U+30C4 || U+309A || style="text-align:center;" | ツ゚

| KATAKANA LETTER AINU TO || U+30C8 || U+309A || style="text-align:center;" | ト゚

| KATAKANA LETTER AINU P || U+31F7 || U+309A || style="text-align:center;" | ㇷ゚

References

External links

Katakana study tool
Katakana Unicode chart
Japanese dictionary with Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji on-screen keyboards
Katakana table with strokes animations

sv:Kana (skriftsystem)#Katakana

Writing system

Overview

Ainu

Taiwanese

Okinawan

Table of katakana

Extended katakana

History

Obsolete kana

Variant forms

Polysyllabic kana

Yi, Ye and Wu

Stroke order

Computer encoding

Hiragana and katakana

Unicode

See also

References

External links