Mandarin Course

Katakana (片仮名, カタカナ or かたかな, Katakana?) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. The word katakana means “fragmentary kana”, as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Katakana are characterized by short, straight strokes and angular corners, and are the simplest of the Japanese scripts. There are two main systems of ordering katakana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering, and the more prevalent gojūon ordering. In modern Japanese, katakana are most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages[3] (called gairaigo). For example, “television” is written terebi (テレビ, terebi?). Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names, foreign places, and personal names. For example America is written アメリカ Amerika (America also has its own kanji (ateji) Amerika (亜米利加, Amerika?) or for short, Beikoku (米国, Beikoku?) which literally means “Rice Country”). Katakana are also used for onomatopoeia,[4] words used to represent sounds; for example pinpon (ピンポン, pinpon?), the “ding-dong” sound of a doorbell, would usually be written in katakana. Also for “words the writer wishes to emphasize.”[5] Technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animal and plant species and minerals, are also commonly written in katakana. Katakana are also often, but not always, used for transcription of Japanese company names. For example …
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