Katakana

Practice Katakana

Enter the pronunciation of any Katakana character and check your input. Use lowercase letters (e.g., 'ka' for カ).

Stroke Order: Learning the correct stroke order is important. Check this resource for guidance.

About Katakana

Katakana is another Japanese writing system, primarily used for foreign words, onomatopoeia, and emphasis. Like Hiragana, it consists of 46 basic characters, each representing a syllable. Katakana is often used to write loanwords from other languages (e.g., コーヒー for "coffee").

Japanese also uses Kanji (Chinese characters) and Hiragana, which were covered earlier. Don't wait to memorize all Katakana characters before moving on—learn them as you progress through the lessons.

There are 5 vowels in Japanese:

• (a) - pronounced "ahh"
• (i) - pronounced like "e" in "eat"
• (u) - pronounced like "oo" in "soon"
• (e) - pronounced like "e" in "elk"
• (o) - pronounced "oh"

All Katakana characters end with one of these vowels, except for (ン). The Japanese 'r' is slightly rolled, resembling a combination of 'd', 'r', and 'l'.

Tenten (゛) and Dakuten (゜): These diacritic marks modify consonant sounds. The `tenten` (゛) voices the consonant (e.g., カ → ガ), while the `dakuten` (゜) alters it further (e.g., ハ → パ). These variations are included in the table below.

Basic Katakana Characters

Katakana Ya, Yu, Yo Combinations

Katakana can form additional sounds using small characters (e.g., ャ, ュ, ョ).