Katakana Japanese alphabet

When you start studying Japanese, you will first learn Hiragana and Katakana.

Hiragana is the basic Japanese character, but what about katakana? Is it an important alphabet?

In this article, we will summarize the role of katakana in Japanese.

What is Katakana?

Katakana is simply used for words that are foreign countries from the Japanese point of view. It is also used for words from English and other languages.

For example,

• Names of Western countries/people's name

• Computers/scientific terms

• Words from foreign countries

• Onomatopoeia

These words are expressed in Katakana. When they are written in Hiragana, the meaning is difficult to understand and very hard to read.

Is Katakana important?

Katakana, like Hiragana and Kanji, is also very important.

Katakana was originally created later than Hiragana because it is difficult to express words unique to Japan using Hiragana alone. Therefore, it is necessary to study all of Hiragana and Katakana as well as Kanji to learn Japanese words.

Is Katakana easy to learn?

If someone reading this knew Hiragana, it would be easier to learn Katakana. Some Katakana are similar to Hiragana. Since Hiragana and Katakana have the same 46 characters, you should learn them in the same way as Hiragana.

Some of my students who study Hiragana and Katakana prefer Hiragana and vice versa.

This depends on your preference, but finding a character you like based on its appearance may be part of the fun.

How to practice Katakana?

To practice katakana, it is important to write and learn it first.

This may be tedious, but it is very important to make sure of your knowledge.

I am sure that all of you have learned your mother tongue by writing it down in a notebook when you were children. There are many characters in Japanese, especially Kanji, and some of them are complex, so the best way to learn them is to write them over and over again to make them your own knowledge.

You can practice writing Katakana beautifully here

In our ebook, we have a Hiragana and Katakana practice book. Of course, a video on how to write is also included. It is very important to write Japanese letters beautifully to the person who sees them.

In this ebook, you can also study a wide range of other Japanese grammar, vocabulary, conversation, and kanji. You can learn Japanese widely as a textbook and also as a dictionary.