4 The uses of Katakana in Japanese

Katakana

Hiragana (ひらがな) is one of the two basic Japanese syllabaries, along with Katakana. It is a phonetic writing system that represents the sounds of the Japanese language. Hiragana consists of 46 basic characters, each representing a different sound or syllable.

Hiragana is used primarily to write native Japanese words, as well as grammatical elements such as particles and verb endings. It is also used to write words that do not have a corresponding Kanji character or when the Kanji character is too complex or obscure for the intended audience.

Katakana(カタカナ) is mainly used for words imported from foreign languages. As Japanese expression became richer and more nuanced, the number of katakana characters also increased. Since the 16th century, countries such as Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands have traded with Japan, bringing a large number of loanwords. As a result, many words that were originally not part of Japanese vocabulary, such as "beer," "cigarette," or "foreign place names," appeared in the Japanese language. Nowadays, katakana is commonly used to represent these loanwords. Additionally, katakana is used for onomatopoeic words, botanical and zoological scientific names, and for emphasis when one wants to stress a particular word, instead of using hiragana or kanji.

What are some common uses of katakana? Katakana has a wide range of applications, but it is commonly classified into categories such as "loanwords," "onomatopoeic words," "botanical and zoological names," and "emphasis."

Katakana represents the same set of phonetic sounds as Hiragana except all the characters are different. Since foreign words must fit into this limited set of [consonants+vowel] sounds, they undergo many radical changes resulting in instances where English speakers can't understand words that are supposed to be derived from English! As a result, the use of Katakana is extremely difficult for English speakers because they expect English words to sound like... well... English. Instead, it is better to completely forget the original English word, and treat the word as an entirely separate Japanese word, otherwise you can run into the habit of saying English words with English pronunciations (whereupon a Japanese person may or may not understand what you are saying).

Notes

1. All the sounds are identical to what they were for Hiragana.
2. As we will learn later, 「を」 is only ever used as a particle and all particles are in Hiragana. Therefore, you will almost never need to use 「ヲ」 and it can be safely ignored. (Unless you are reading very old telegrams or something.)
3. The four characters 「シ」、「ン」、「ツ」、and 「ソ」 are fiendishly similar to each other. Basically, the difference is that the first two are more "horizontal" than the second two. The little lines are slanted more horizontally and the long line is drawn in a curve from bottom to top. The second two have almost vertical little lines and the long line doesn't curve as much as it is drawn from top to bottom. It is almost like a slash while the former is more like an arc. These characters are hard to sort out and require some patience and practice.
4. The characters 「ノ」、「メ」、and 「ヌ」 are also something to pay careful attention to, as well as, 「フ」、「ワ」、 and 「ウ」. Yes, they all look very similar. No, I can't do anything about it.
5. Sometimes 「・」 is used to denote what would be spaces in English.

The next section is about introducing kanji.