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{{Short description|Japanese syllabary}}{{For|the Unicode block|Katakana (Unicode block)}}{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}}

factoids

Taiwanese Hokkien, Palauan (formerly)|time=~800 CE to the present|fam1=Oracle bone script|fam2=Seal script|fam3=Clerical script|fam4=Regular script (kanji)|fam5=Man'yōgana|sisters=Hiragana|sample=Japanese Katakana kyokashotai KA.svgclass=nowrap Katakana:}}U+30A0–U+30FF Katakana Phonetic Extensions:}}U+31F0–U+31FFEnclosed CJK Letters and Months:}}U+3200–U+32FFHalfwidth and Fullwidth Forms:}}U+FF00–U+FFEFKana Extended-B:}}U+1AFF0–U+1AFFF Kana Supplement:}}U+1B000–U+1B0FF Kana Extended-A:}}U+1B100–U+1B12F Small Kana Extension:}}U+1B130–U+1B16F }}|imagesize=100px|iso15924=Kana}}{{Japanese writing}}{{Nihongo|Katakana|(wikt:片仮名|片仮名)、(wikt:カタカナ|カタカナ)||{{IPA-ja|katakaꜜna, kataꜜkana|IPA}}}} is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana,Roy Andrew Miller (1966) A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons in the Modern Language, Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Tokyo, Japan, p. 28, Lesson 7: Katakana: a—no. "Side by side with hiragana, modern Japanese writing makes use of another complete set of similar symbols called the katakana." 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 (wikt:ã‚¢|ã‚¢)); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka" (katakana (wikt:ã‚«|ã‚«)); or "n" (katakana (wikt:ン|ン)), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds like English m, n or ng ({{IPAblink|Å‹}}) 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.WEB,weblink How did katakana and hiragana originate?,

Writing system

Overview {| alignright border"0" cellpadding"0" style"width: 14em; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom:1em"

|{| class="wikitable" |+ Gojūon – Katakana characters with a nucleus!! a !! i !! u !! e !! o align=center!title="no onset"|{{color|gray|∅}}A (kana)>アI (kana)>U (kana)>ウE (kana)>O (kana)>オ align=center!kKa (kana)>カKi (kana)>Ku (kana)>クKe (kana)>Ko (kana)>コ align=center!sSa (kana)>サShi (kana)>Su (kana)>スSe (kana)>So (kana)>ソ align=center!tTa (kana)>タChi (kana)>Tsu (kana)>ツTe (kana)>To (kana)>ト align=center!nNa (kana)>ナNi (kana)>Nu (kana)>ヌNe (kana)>No (kana)>ノ align=center!hHa (kana)>ハHi (kana)>Fu (kana)>フHe (kana)>Ho (kana)>ホ align=center!mMa (kana)>マMi (kana)>Mu (kana)>ムMe (kana)>Mo (kana)>モ align=center!yYa (kana)>ヤ See #Obsolete kana >Yu (kana)>ユ ヨ align=center!rRa (kana)>ラRi (kana)>リRu (kana)>Re (kana)>レロ align=center!wWa (kana)>ワWi (kana)>We (kana)>ヱヲ align=center ン (n)The complete katakana script consists of 48 characters, not counting functional and diacritic marks:

• 5 nucleus vowels
• 42 core or body (onset-nucleus) syllabograms, consisting of nine consonants in combination with each of the five vowels, of which three possible combinations (yi, ye, wu) are not canonical
• 1 coda consonant

These are conceived as a 5×10 grid (, 五十音, literally "fifty sounds"), as shown in the adjacent table, read {{nowrap|ア (a)}}, {{nowrap|イ (i)}}, {{nowrap|ウ (u)}}, {{nowrap|エ (e)}}, {{nowrap|オ (o)}}, {{nowrap|カ (ka)}}, {{nowrap|キ (ki)}}, {{nowrap|ク (ku)}}, {{nowrap|ケ (ke)}}, {{nowrap|コ (ko)}} and so on. The inherits its vowel and consonant order from Sanskrit practice. In vertical text contexts, which used to be the default case, the grid is usually presented as 10 columns by 5 rows, with vowels on the right hand side and ア (a) on top. Katakana glyphs in the same row or column do not share common graphic characteristics. Three of the syllabograms to be expected, yi, ye and wu, may have been used idiosyncratically with varying glyphs, but never became conventional in any language and are not present at all in modern Japanese.The 50-sound table is often amended with an extra character, the nasal ン (n). This can appear in several positions, most often next to the N signs or, because it developed from one of many mu hentaigana, below the u column. It may also be appended to the vowel row or the a column. Here, it is shown in a table of its own.The script includes two diacritic marks placed at the upper right of the base character that change the initial sound of a syllabogram. A double dot, called dakuten, indicates a primary alteration; most often it voices the consonant: k→g, s→z, t→d and h→b; for example, {{nowrap|カ (ka)}} becomes {{nowrap|ガ (ga)}}. Secondary alteration, where possible, is shown by a circular handakuten: h→p; For example; {{nowrap|ハ (ha)}} becomes {{nowrap|パ (pa)}}. Diacritics, though used for over a thousand years, only became mandatory in the Japanese writing system in the second half of the 20th century. Their application is strictly limited in proper writing systems,{{clarify|reason = 'Strictly limited' in what sense? 'Proper' in what sense? |date=September 2016}} but may be more extensive in academic transcriptions.Furthermore, some characters may have special semantics when used in smaller sizes after a normal one (see below), but this does not make the script truly bicameral.The layout of the table promotes a systematic view of kana syllabograms as being always pronounced with the same single consonant followed by a vowel, but this is not exactly the case (and never has been). Existing schemes for the romanization of Japanese either are based on the systematic nature of the script, e.g. nihon-shiki チ ti, or they apply some Western graphotactics, usually the English one, to the common Japanese pronunciation of the kana signs, e.g. Hepburn-shiki チ chi. Both approaches conceal the fact, though, that many consonant-based katakana signs, especially those canonically ending in u, can be used in coda position, too, where the vowel is unvoiced and therefore barely perceptible.

Japanese

|{| class"wikitable" style"vertical-align:top; padding:2px; text-align:center;"|+ Katakana used in Japanese orthography">

Syllabary and orthography {| alignright style"margin-left:1em;"|{| class"wikitable" style"vertical-align:top; padding:2px; text-align:center;"|+ Katakana used in Japanese orthography

!! a !! i !! u !! e !! o! title="No onset" | ∅ア >イ >ウ>エ>|オ! kカ>キ>ク>ケ>|コ! g|ゴ! sサ>シ>ス>セ>|ソ! z|ゾ! tタ>チ>ツ>テ>|ト! d|ド! nナ>ニ>ヌ>ネ>|ノ! hハ>ヒ>フ>ヘ>|ホ! b|ボ! p|ポ! mマ>ミ>ム>メ>|モ! yヤ>}}ユ{{N/A|ヨ! rラ>リ>ル>レ>|ロ! wワ>ヰ}}{{N/Aヱ}}ヲ ン (n)! colspan="6" | Functional marks and diacriticsッ>ヽ>dakuten>゜#ececec|border=darkgray}} Unused, extinct, or obsoleteOf the 48 katakana syllabograms described above, only 46 are used in modern Japanese, and one of these is preserved for only a single use:

• wi and we are pronounced as vowels in modern Japanese and are therefore obsolete, having been supplanted by i and e, respectively.
• wo is now used only as a particle, and is normally pronounced the same as vowel オ o. As a particle, it is usually written in hiragana (ã‚’) and the katakana form, ヲ, is almost obsolete.

A small version of the katakana for ya, yu or yo (ャ, ュ or ョ, respectively) may be added to katakana ending in i. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide (palatalization) to a, u or o, e.g. キャ (ki + ya) /kja/. Addition of the small y kana is called yōon.A character called a sokuon, which is visually identical to a small tsu ッ, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). This is represented in rōmaji by doubling the consonant that follows the sokuon. In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; for example, compare サカ saka "hill" with サッカ sakka "author". Geminated consonants are common in transliterations of foreign loanwords; for example, English "bed" is represented as ベッド (beddo). The sokuon also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop. However, it cannot be used to double the na, ni, nu, ne, no syllables' consonants; to double these, the singular n (ン) is added in front of the syllable. The sokuon may also be used to approximate a non-native sound: Bach is written {{nihongo2|バッハ}} (Bahha); Mach as {{nihongo2|マッハ}} (Mahha).Both katakana and hiragana usually spell native long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana. However, in foreign loanwords, katakana instead uses a vowel extender mark, called a chōonpu ("long vowel mark"). This is a short line (ー) following the direction of the text, horizontal for yokogaki (horizontal text), and vertical for tategaki (vertical text). For example, メール mēru is the gairaigo for e-mail taken from the English word "mail"; the ー lengthens the e. There are some exceptions, such as {{nihongo2|ローソク}} ({{nihongo3|"candle"|蝋燭|rōsoku}}) or {{nihongo2|ケータイ}}({{nihongo3|"mobile phone"|携帯|kētai}}), where Japanese words written in katakana use the elongation mark, too.Standard and voiced iteration marks are written in katakana as ヽ and ヾ, respectively.

Extensions

Small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds (ハァ haa, ネェ nee), but in katakana they are more often used in yōon-like extended digraphs designed to represent phonemes not present in Japanese; examples include チェ (che) in チェンジ chenji ("change"), ファ (fa) in ファミリー famirī ("family") and ウィ (wi) and ディ (di) in ウィキペディア Wikipedia; see below for the full list.

Usage

File:Myoe_Shonin_Kashu.jpg|thumb|Collection of poems by priest MyōeMyōeIn modern Japanese, katakana is most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages or loanwords (other than words historically imported from Chinese), called gairaigo."The Japanese Writing System (2) Katakana", p. 29 in Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese. McGraw-Hill, 1993, {{ISBN|0070722935}} For example, "ice cream" is written {{Nihongo krt||アイスクリーム|aisukurīmu}}. Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names, foreign places, and foreign personal names. For example, the United States is usually referred to as {{Nihongo krt||アメリカ|Amerika}}, rather than in its ateji kanji spelling of {{Nihongo krt||亜米利加|Amerika}}.Katakana are also used for onomatopoeia, words used to represent sounds – for example, {{Nihongo krt||ピンポン|pinpon}}, the "ding-dong" sound of a doorbell.Technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animal and plant species and minerals, are also commonly written in katakana.WEB,weblink Hiragana, Katakana & Kanji, 8 September 2010, Japanese Word Characters, 15 October 2011, Homo sapiens, as a species, is written {{Nihongo krt||ヒト|hito}}, rather than its kanji {{nihongo2|人}}.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,PRESS RELEASE Pre–World War II official documents mix katakana and kanji in the same way that hiragana and kanji are mixed in modern Japanese texts, that is, katakana were used for okurigana and particles such as wa or o.Katakana was also used for telegrams in Japan before 1988, and for computer systems – before the introduction of multibyte characters – in the 1980s. Most computers of that era used katakana instead of kanji or hiragana for output.Although words borrowed from ancient Chinese are usually written in kanji, loanwords from modern Chinese languages that are borrowed directly use katakana instead.{|class="wikitable"|+ Examples of modern Chinese loanwords in Japanese! Japanese !!title="Hepburn romanization of Japanese kana"| Hepburn !! Meaning !! Chinese !!title="modern Hànyǔ Pīnyīn romanization of Chinese Hanzi"| Pinyin/Yale !! Source languagemājan>mahjong>májiàng>Mandarinūroncha>Oolong tea>|wūlóngcháchāhan>fried rice>|chǎofànchāshū>Char siu>chā sīurowspan=2|Cantoneseshūmai>shumai>|sīu máaiThe very common Chinese loanword rāmen, written in katakana as , is rarely written with its kanji ().There are rare instances where the opposite has occurred, with kanji forms created from words originally written in katakana. An example of this is kōhī, ("coffee"), which can alternatively be written as . This kanji usage is occasionally employed by coffee manufacturers or coffee shops for novelty.Katakana is used to indicate the on'yomi (Chinese-derived readings) of a kanji in a kanji dictionary. For instance, the kanji 人 has a Japanese pronunciation, written in hiragana as hito (person), as well as a Chinese derived pronunciation, written in katakana as jin (used to denote groups of people). Katakana is sometimes used instead of hiragana as furigana to give the pronunciation of a word written in Roman characters, or for a foreign word, which is written as kanji for the meaning, but intended to be pronounced as the original.(File:キリ走行注意 (19822048951).jpg|thumb|In this travel warning, the kanji for "fog" () has been written in katakana () to make it more immediately readable.)Katakana are also sometimes used to indicate words being spoken in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent. For example, in a manga, the speech of a foreign character or a robot may be represented by konnichiwa ("hello") instead of the more typical hiragana . Some Japanese personal names are written in katakana. This was more common in the past, hence elderly women often have katakana names. This was particularly common among women in the Meiji and Taishō periods, when many poor, illiterate parents were unwilling to pay a scholar to give their daughters names in kanji.WEB, Tackett, Rachel, Why old Japanese women have names in katakana,weblink RocketNews24, 19 September 2015, 10 September 2015,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20150910082557weblink">weblink dead, 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."Mutsuko Endo Simon (1984) Section 3.3 "Katakana", p. 36 in A Practical Guide for Teachers of Elementary Japanese, Center for Japanese Studies, the University of Michigan. {{ISBN|0939512165}} Most students who have learned hiragana "do not have great difficulty in memorizing" katakana as well.Simon, p. 36 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)).weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070318020645weblink">Reading Japanese, Lesson 1. joyo96.orgFile:Meiji_Kenpo01.jpg|thumb|300px|left|A page of the Meiji Constitution written exclusively with kyūjitaikyūjitai

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 {{transl|ain|up}} is represented by ( [u followed by small pu]). Ainu also uses three handakuten modified katakana: ({{IPA|[tse]}}) and either or ({{IPA|[tu̜]}}). 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(File:Taiwanese kana normal tone 5.png|15px) ヲァヌ(File:Taiwanese kana normal tone 5.png|15px) ギイ(File:Taiwanese kana normal tone 2.png|15px) カア(File:Taiwanese kana normal tone 2.png|15px) ビェン(File:Taiwanese kana normal tone 5.png|15px)) is a katakana-based writing system once used to write Holo Taiwanese, when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. It functioned as a phonetic guide for Chinese characters, much like furigana in Japanese or Zhùyīn fúhào in Chinese. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, including Hakka and Formosan languages.Unlike Japanese or Ainu, Taiwanese kana are used similarly to the zhùyīn fúhào characters, 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 {{transl|ja|shi}} , {{transl|ja|tsu}} , {{transl|ja|so}} , and {{transl|ja|n}} 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.{{Katakana table}}

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.WEB,weblink 平成3年6月28日内閣告示第2号:外来語の表記, Japanese cabinet order No.2 (28 June 1991):The notation of loanword, Cabinet of Japan, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 25 May 2011, Cabinet of Japan,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20190106125953weblink">weblink 6 January 2019, dead, Katakana combinations with beige backgrounds are suggested by the American National Standards InstituteWEB,weblink 米国規格(ANSI Z39.11-1972)―要約, 27 February 2016, {{self-published source|date=February 2016}} and the British Standards Institution as possible uses.WEB,weblink 英国規格(BS 4812 : 1972)―要約, 27 February 2016, {{self-published source|date=February 2016}} Ones with purple backgrounds appear on the 1974 version of the Hyōjun-shiki formatting.WEB,weblink 標準式ローマ字つづり―引用, 27 February 2016, {{self-published source|date=February 2016}}Pronunciations are shown in Hepburn romanization.{| border="0" style="width:80%;" cellpadding="2px" cellspacing="2px" style="vertical-align:top; background:#9cf; text-align:center;" {{translyi}}ja|ye}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#9cf; text-align:center;" {{translwa}}*ja|wi}} {{translwu}}*ja|we}}ja|wo}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#9cf; text-align:center;" {{translwyu}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#9cf; text-align:center;"ja|va}}ja|vi}}jaii}}ja|ve}}ja|vo}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#eee8aa; text-align:center;"ja|vya}} {{translvyu}}ja|vye}}ja|vyo}}*** style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;" {{translkye}}***| style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;" {{translgye}}| style="vertical-align:top; background:#9cf; text-align:center;"ja|kwa}}ja|kwi}}**ja|kwe}}ja|kwo}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#9cf; text-align:center;" {{translkwa}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#eee8aa; text-align:center;" {{translgwa}}ja|gwi}} *ja|gwe}}***ja|gwo}}*** style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;" {{translgwa}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;" {{translshe}}| style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;" {{translje}}| style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"| {{translsi}}*** style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"| {{translzi}}*** style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;" {{translche}}| style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;" {{translje}}| style="vertical-align:top; background:#fc9; text-align:center;"ja|tsa}} {{transltsi}}ja|tse}}ja|tso}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#9cf; text-align:center;" {{transltsyu}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"ja|(dza)}}ja|(dzi)}}| ja|(dze)}}ja|(dzo)}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"ja|(dzyu)}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#e7f5de; text-align:center;" {{translti}} {{transltu}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#9cf; text-align:center;" {{transl(twi)}}**ja|tyu}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#e7f5de; text-align:center;" {{transldi}} {{transldu}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#fc9; text-align:center;" {{transl(dwi)}}**ja|dyu}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"|ja|(nwi)}}**| {{translnye}}***| style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;" {{translhye}}***| style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"|ja|(bwi)}}**| {{translbye}}| style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"|ja|(pwi)}}**| {{translpye}}| style="vertical-align:top; background:#fc9; text-align:center;"ja|fa}}ja|fi}}ja|fe}}ja|fo}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#eee8aa; text-align:center;"ja|fya}} {{translfyu}}ja|fye}}ja|fyo}}*** style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;" {{translhu}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"|ja|(mwi)}}**| {{translmye}}| style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"|ja|(rwi)}}**| {{translrye}}| style="vertical-align:top; background:#e1a1ff; text-align:center;"ja|la}}ja|li}}ja|lu}}ja|le}}ja|lo}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#e9e9e9; text-align:center;"ja|lya}}|ja|lyu}}ja|lye}}ja|lyo}} style="vertical-align:top; background:#eee8aa; text-align:center;" {{translva}}}}{{sup|iii}} {{translvi}}}}{{sup|iii}} {{translve}}}}{{sup|iii}} {{translvo}}}}{{sup|iii}}

• — The use of {{nihongo2|ウ}} in these two cases to represent {{transl|ja|w}} is rare in modern Japanese except for Internet slang and customary transcription of the Latin sound [w] into katakana. E.g.: ({{transl|ja|Mineruwa}} "Minerva", from Latin [mɪˈnÉ›rwa]); (Wurukānusu "Vulcan", from Latin , [wÊŠlˈkaːnÊŠs]). The {{transl|ja|wa}}-type of foreign sounds (as in watt or white) is usually transcribed to ({{transl|ja|wa}}), while the {{transl|ja|wu}}-type (as in wood or woman) is usually to ウ ({{transl|ja|u}}) or ({{transl|ja|Å«}}).
• — The spellings are employed in transcription of hard consonants + i in Slavic languages.
• — These are mentioned in Note 1 ({{nihongo2|留意事項その1}}) of 1991 Cabinet Order No. 2 as examples of other "usage unregulated" by the guidelines.
• ii — {{nihongo2|ヴ}} has a rarely-used hiragana form in {{nihongo2|ã‚”}} that is also {{transl|ja|vu}} in Hepburn romanization systems.
• iii — The characters in {{green|green}} are obsolete in modern Japanese and very rarely used.WEB,weblink ja:昭和21年内閣告示第33号 「現代かなづかい」, Japanese Cabinet Order No.33 in 1946 – Modern kana usage, 16 November 1946, Cabinet of Japan, ja, 25 May 2011, Cabinet of Japan, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20011006222929weblink">weblink 6 October 2001, WEB,weblink ja:昭和61年内閣告示第1号 「現代仮名遣い」, Japanese Cabinet Order No.1 in 1986 – Modern kana usage, 1 July 1986, Cabinet of Japan, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, ja, 25 May 2011, Cabinet of Japan,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20110524004651weblink">weblink 24 May 2011, dead,

History

(File:Katakana origine.svg|thumb|Roots of katakana highlighted)(File:Syougaku11.jpg|thumb|Syougaku11)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 {{Nihongo||片|kata|"partial, fragmented"}}. For example, {{Nihongo||カ|ka}} comes from the left side of {{Nihongo||加|ka|lit. "increase", but the original meaning is no longer applicable to kana}}. 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.Japanese katakana. Omniglot.com Katakana is also heavily influenced by Sanskrit due to the original creators having travelled and worked with Indian Buddhists based in East Asia during the era.NEWS, Aiyar, Pallavi, 2018-06-09, The oldest recorded Indian in Japan impacts the country's culture even today, en-IN, The Hindu,weblink 2022-09-18, 0971-751X, WEB, The Influence of Sanskrit on the Japanese Sound System – संस्कृता वाक्,weblink 2022-09-18, sites.google.com, 20 September 2014,weblink dead, Official documents of the Empire of Japan were written exclusively with kyūjitai and katakana.

Obsolete kana

Variant forms

{{see also|hentaigana}}Katakana have variant forms. For example, (File:Katakana letter Ne 2.svg|20px)(ネ) and (File:Katakana letter Wi 2.svg|20px)(ヰ).『小学略則教授法』「五十音図」 However, katakana's variant forms are fewer than hiragana's ones. 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.BOOK, Tranter, Nicolas, The Languages of Japan and Korea,weblink 2012, Routledge, 978-0-415-46287-7, 218,

Polysyllabic kana

{{see also|kana ligature}}

Yi, Ye and Wu

{{see also|Yi (kana)|Ye (kana)|Wu (kana)}}

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.(File:Table katakana.svg|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

{{Unreferenced section|date=September 2009}}In addition to the usual {{nihongo|full-width|全角|zenkaku}} display forms of characters, katakana has a second form, {{nihongo|half-width|半角|hankaku}}. 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.{{unicode chart Katakana}}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.{{Unicode chart Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms|subset=katakana}}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.{{Unicode chart Enclosed CJK Letters and Months|subset=katakana}}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:{{Unicode chart Katakana Phonetic Extensions}}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:{{Unicode chart Kana Supplement}}The Unicode block for Small Kana Extension is U+1B130–U+1B16F:{{Unicode chart Small Kana Extension}}The Kana Extended-A Unicode block is U+1B100–1B12F. It contains hentaigana (non-standard hiragana) and historic kana characters.{{Unicode chart Kana Extended-A}}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.{{Unicode chart Kana Extended-B}}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): ã‚™
  • U+309A COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (non-spacing handakuten): ã‚š
  • U+309B KATAKANA-HIRAGANA VOICED SOUND MARK (spacing dakuten): ã‚›
  • U+309C KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (spacing handakuten): ã‚œ
• 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 {{Unicode version|version=15.1}}, 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 bidakuon in Japanese. Other, arbitrary combinations with U+309A handakuten are also possible.{| class="wikitable nounderlines" style="border-collapse:collapse;background:#FFFFFF;font-size:large;text-align:center" Katakana named sequencesUnicode Named Character Sequences Database style="background:#F8F8F8;font-size:small" Sequence name colspan="2" style="width:20pt" Glyph KATAKANA LETTER BIDAKUON NGA style="font-size:small;" U+309A カ゚ KATAKANA LETTER BIDAKUON NGI style="font-size:small;" U+309A キ゚ KATAKANA LETTER BIDAKUON NGU style="font-size:small;" U+309A ク゚ KATAKANA LETTER BIDAKUON NGE style="font-size:small;" U+309A ケ゚ KATAKANA LETTER BIDAKUON NGO style="font-size:small;" U+309A コ゚ KATAKANA LETTER AINU CE style="font-size:small;" U+309A セ゚ KATAKANA LETTER AINU TU style="font-size:small;" U+309A ツ゚ KATAKANA LETTER AINU TO style="font-size:small;" U+309A ト゚ KATAKANA LETTER AINU P style="font-size:small;" U+309A ㇷ゚

See also

• Japanese phonology
• Hiragana
• Historical kana usage
• Rōmaji
• Gugyeol
• Tōdaiji Fujumonkō, oldest example of kanji text with katakana annotations
• (:File:Beschrijving van Japan - ABC (cropped).jpg) for the kana as described by Engelbert Kaempfer in 1727

References

{{Reflist}}

External links

{{Commons and category}}{{Wiktionary|katakana}}

• Katakana study tool
• Katakana Unicode chart
• weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20120119075907weblink">Japanese dictionary with Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji on-screen keyboards

{{Japanese language}}{{list of writing systems}}{{Authority control}}