Katakana

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Katakana

is a Japanese

Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
syllabary

Syllabary

A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary typically represents an optional consonant sound followed by a vowel sound....
, one component of the Japanese writing system

Japanese writing system

The modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:*Kanji, ideographs from Chinese character,*Hiragana, a set of symbols that approximate syllables that make up words, and...
along with hiragana

Hiragana

is a Japanese language syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the romanization of Japanese. Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each symbol represents one mora ....
, kanji

Kanji

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
. The word katakana means "fragmentary kana

Kana

Kana are the Syllabary Japanese language scripts, as opposed to the Logogram Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as romaji....
", 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

Kana

Kana are the Syllabary Japanese language scripts, as opposed to the Logogram Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as romaji....
: the old-fashioned iroha

Iroha

The iroha is a Japanese language poem most likely written sometime during the Heian period . Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon sect of Buddhism, Kukai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian Period....
ordering, and the more prevalent gojuon

Gojuon

Transcription (linguistics)

Transcription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken language source, such as the proceedings of a court hearing....
of words from foreign languages (called gairaigo
Gairaigo

Gairaigo is Japanese language for "Loanword" or "borrowed word", and indicates a transliteration into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed from Chinese language....
).

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Katakana'

Start a new discussion about 'Katakana'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

is a Japanese

Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
syllabary

Syllabary

Japanese writing system

Hiragana

Kanji

Latin alphabet

Kana

Kana are the Syllabary Japanese language scripts, as opposed to the Logogram Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as romaji....
: the old-fashioned iroha

Iroha

Gojuon

Usage

In modern Japanese, katakana are most often used for transcription

Transcription (linguistics)

Kanji

are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese language logogram along with hiragana , katakana , Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet....
(ateji

Ateji

In modern Japanese language, are kanji used phonetically to represent native or borrowed words. This is analogous to man'yogana in pre-modern Japanese....
) or for short, , which literally means "Rice Country").

Katakana are also used for onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is a word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing, such as animal noises like "oink" or "meow", or suggesting its source object, such as "boom", "zoom", "click", "bunk", "clang", "buzz", "zap", or "bang"....
, words used to represent sounds. For example, , the "ding-dong" sound of a doorbell, would usually be written in katakana. Also, katakana is used for words the writer wishes to emphasize.

Technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animal and plant species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring....
and minerals, are also commonly written in katakana.

Katakana are also often, but not always, used for transcription of Japanese company names. For example Suzuki

Suzuki

is a multinational corporation headquartered in Hamamatsu, Japan that specializes in manufacturing compact automobiles, a full range of motorcycles, All-terrain vehicle, outboard motor, wheelchairs and a variety of other small internal combustion engines....
is written ???, and Toyota is written ???. Katakana are also used for emphasis

Emphasis (typography)

In typography, emphasis is the exaggeration of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text—to emphasise them....
, especially on signs, advertisements, and hoardings (i.e., billboard

Billboard (advertising)

A billboard is a large Out-of-home advertising structure , typically found in high traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large Advertising to passing pedestrians and drivers....
s). For example, it is common to see ("here"), ("trash") or ("glasses"), and words to be emphasized in a sentence are also sometimes written in katakana, mirroring the European usage of italics.

Pre-World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
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 and particles

Japanese particles

Japanese particles, or , are suffixes or short words in Japanese grammar that immediately follow the modified noun, verb, adjective, or sentence....
such as or .

Katakana were also used for telegrams in Japan before 1988, and for computer systems—before the introduction of multibyte characters—in the 1980s. Most computers in that era used katakana instead of kanji and/or hiragana for output.

Although words borrowed from ancient Chinese

Chinese language

Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....
are usually written in kanji, loanwords from modern Chinese dialects which are borrowed directly rather than using the Sino-Japanese on'yomi readings, are often written in katakana. Examples include:

Japanese	Romaji	Meaning	Chinese Chinese language Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....	Source language
?????	majan	mahjong Mahjong Mahjong is a game for four players that originated in China. Mahjong involves skill, strategy, and calculation, as well as a certain degree of chance....	?? májiàng	Mandarin
?????	uroncha	Oolong Oolong Oolong is a traditional Chinese tea somewhere between green tea and black tea in oxidation. It ranges from 10% to 70% oxidation.In Chinese tea culture, semi-oxidized oolong teas are collectively grouped as qingch? .... tea	??? wulóng	Mandarin
?????	chahan	fried rice Fried rice Fried rice is a popular component of Chinese cuisine and other forms of Asian cuisine. It is made from rice fried in a wok, typically with additional ingredients left over from other dishes....	?? chaofàn	Mandarin
??????	chashu	barbecued pork	?? cha siu Char siu Char siu , otherwise known as barbecued pork in China or Chinese barbecued/roast pork outside China, is a popular way to prepare pork in Cantonese cuisine....	Cantonese Cantonese Cantonese generally refers to people or things associated with a region around the Chinese province of Guangdong or its capital, Guangzhou.* Cantonese, a branch of the Chinese language family, spoken in Guangdong and neighboring provinces...
?????	shumai	a form of dim sum Dim sum Dim sum is the name for a Chinese cuisine which involves a wide range of light dishes served alongside Chinese tea. It is usually served in the mornings until noon time at Chinese restaurants and at specialty dim sum eateries where typical dishes are available throughout the day....	?? siu maai	Cantonese

The very common Chinese loanword is rarely written with its kanji .

There are rare cases where the opposite has occurred, with kanji forms created from words originally written in katakana. An example of this is , ("coffee

Coffee

Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called coffee beans, of the Coffea. Caffeinated coffee has a stimulating effect in humans....
"), which can be alternatively written as . This kanji usage is occasionally employed by coffee manufacturers or coffee shops for novelty.

Katakana are sometimes used instead of hiragana

Hiragana

Furigana

is a Japanese language reading aid, consisting of smaller kana printed next to a kanji or other character to indicate its pronunciation. In horizontal text, Yokogaki and tategaki, they are placed above the line of text, while in vertical text, Yokogaki and tategaki, they are placed to the right of the line of text, as illustrated below....
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.

Katakana are also sometimes used to indicate words being spoken in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent, by foreign characters, robots, etc. For example, in a manga

Manga

, , are comics and print cartoons , in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 20th century. In their modern form, manga date from shortly after World War II, but they have a long, complex pre-history in earlier Japanese art....
, the speech of a foreign character or a robot may be represented by, for example, ("hello") instead of the more usual hiragana .

Katakana are also used to indicate the (Chinese

Chinese language

Kanji

are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese language logogram along with hiragana , katakana , Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet....
in a kanji dictionary.

Some Japanese personal names are written in katakana. This was more common in the past, hence elderly women often have katakana names.

It is very common to write words with difficult-to-read kanji in katakana. This phenomenon is often seen with medical terminology

Medical terminology

Medical terminology is a vocabulary for accurately describing the human body and associated components, conditions, processes and process in a science-based manner....
. For example, in the word ("dermatology

Dermatology

Dermatology is the branch of medicine dealing with the skin and Skin disease, a unique specialty with both medical and surgical aspects. The name of this specialty originated in the form of the words dermologie and, a little later, dermatologia ....
"), the second kanji, , is considered difficult to read, and thus the word is commonly written or , mixing kanji and katakana. Similarly, difficult-to-read kanji such as ('cancer

Cancer

Cancer is a class of diseases in which a group of cell display uncontrolled growth , invasion , and sometimes metastasis . These three malignant properties of cancers differentiate them from benign tumors, which are self-limited, do not invade or metastasize....
') are often written in katakana or hiragana.

Katakana is also used for traditional musical notations, as in the of , and in ensembles with , , and .

Orthography

Foreign phrases are sometimes transliterated with a space separating the words, or a middle dot

Interpunct

An interpunct is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin alphabet, being perhaps the first consistent visual representation of word boundaries in written language....
called . When it is assumed that the reader knows the separate gairaigo words in the phrase, the middle dot is not used. For example, the phrase ????????? konpyuta gemu ("computer game") contains two well-known gairaigo, and therefore is not written with a middle dot.

Katakana spelling differs slightly from hiragana. While hiragana spells long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana, katakana usually uses a vowel extender mark called a choon

Choon

The , also known as ', ', or Katakana-Hiragana Prolonged Sound Mark by the Unicode Consortium, is a Japanese typographic symbols which indicates a choon, or a long vowel of two mora e in length....
. This is a short line following the direction of the text, horizontal for yokogaki (horizontal text), and vertical for tategaki (vertical text). It is generally used in foreign loanwords; long vowels in katakana words of Japanese origin are usually spelt as they would be in hiragana. There are exceptions such as ????(?? rosoku "candle") or ????(?? ketai "mobile phone").

A small tsu called a sokuon
Sokuon

The is a Japanese typographic symbols consisting of a small hiragana or katakana tsu. In less academic language it is called or , meaning "little tsu"....
indicates a geminate consonant, represented in romaji by the doubling of the following consonant. For example, "bed" is represented in katakana as ??? (beddo). The sokuon may also be used to approximate a non-native sound; Bach is written ??? (Bahha); Mach as ??? (Mahha).

Foreign sounds may be challenging to express in Japanese, resulting in spellings such as Khrushchev (?????? Furushichofu), Ali Khamenei (???·?????? Ari Hamenei) or Itzhak Perlman

Itzhak Perlman

Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-United States of America violin virtuoso, conducting, and teacher....
(????·????? Itsuhaku Paruman or ?????·????? Itsaku Paruman).

Table of katakana

This is a table of katakana together with their Hepburn romanization

Hepburn romanization

The is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese?English dictionary, published in 1887....
. Katakana with dakuten

Dakuten

, colloquially ten-ten , is a diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese language kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced consonant....
or handakuten follow the gojuon

Gojuon

The is a Japanese language ordering of kana.It is named for the 5x10 grid in which the characters are displayed, but the grid is not filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a syllabic chart is therefore 46....
kana without them. Characters in red are obsolete, characters in green are modern additions. used mainly to represent sounds from other languages. Learning to read katakana is often complicated by the similarities between different characters. For example, shi ? and tsu ? , as well as so ? and 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

Ink brush

Ink brushes are used in Chinese calligraphy. They are also used in Chinese painting and descendant brush painting styles . Together with the ink stone, ink and paper, the four writing implements form the Four Treasures of the Study....
.)

¹: These now-obsolete katakana appeared in some textbooks as early as 1873 ( Meiji

Meiji period

The , or Meiji era, denotes the 45-year reign of the Meiji Emperor, running, in the Gregorian calendar, from 23 October 1868 to 30 July 1912. During this time, Japan started its modernization and rose to world power status....
6), but never became widespread.

²: In modern times, ?? ("wo") is used as the representation of a "wo" sound instead. The katakana version of the wo kana

Wo (kana)

?, in hiragana, or ? in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represent one Mora ....
, ?, is primarily used, albeit rarely, to represent the particle

Grammatical particle

A particle, in grammar, is a function word that is not assignable to any of the traditional grammatical word classes . The term is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of elements and lacks a precise universal definition....
? in katakana. The particle is commonly pronounced the same as the o kana

O (kana)

In Japanese writing system, the kana ? and ? occupy the fifth place, between e and ka , in the modern Gojuon system of collation kana....
.

History

Katakana was developed in the early Heian Period

Heian period

The is the last division of classical History of Japan, running from 794 to 1185. It is the period in Japanese history when Confucianism and other Chinese culture were at their height....
from parts of man'yogana characters as a form of shorthand. For example, ka ? comes from the left side of ka ? "increase". The table below shows the origins of each katakana: the red markings of the original Chinese character

Chinese character

A Chinese character, also known as a Han character , is a logogram used in writing Chinese language ,'' Japanese language ,'' less frequently Korean language ,'' and formerly Vietnamese language .''...
eventually became each corresponding symbol.

Japanese language instruction

Some instructors "introduce katakana after the students have learned to read and write sentences in hiragana without difficulty and know the rules." Most students who have learned hiragana "do not have great difficulty in memorizing" katakana as well.

Other instructors introduce the katakana first, because these are used with loanwords. This gives students a chance to practice reading and writing kana with meaningful words. This is the approach taken by Eleanor Harz Jorden.

Computer encoding

In addition to fonts intended for Japanese text and Unicode catch-all fonts (like Arial Unicode MS

Arial Unicode MS

In digital typography, the TrueType font Arial Unicode MS is an extended version of the typeface Arial. Compared to Arial, it includes higher line height, omits Kerning#Kerning pairss and adds enough glyphs to cover a large subset of Unicode 2.1?thus supporting most Microsoft code pages, but also requiring much more computer storage space ....
), many fonts intended for Chinese text also include katakana (such as MS Song).

Katakana have two forms of encoding, halfwidth

Half-width kana

Half-width kana is half of fullwidth form. It refers to the katakana character portion of the character set specified by JIS X 0201.Although an official name is JIS X 0201 katakana, half-width kana is the commonly known name and this term will be used in this article....
and fullwidth . The halfwidth forms come from JIS X 0201

JIS X 0201

JIS X 0201, a Japanese Industrial Standards developed in 1969 , was the first Japanese character encoding to become widely used. It is either 7-bit encoding or 8-bit encoding, although 8-bit encoding is dominant for modern use....
originally. This includes halfwidth katakana in right side area of ASCII

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange , is a coding standard that can be used for interchanging information, if the information is expressed mainly by the written form of English words....
. That is, most halfwidth katakana could be represented by one byte each. In the late 1970s, two-byte character sets such as JIS X 0208

JIS X 0208

JIS X 0208 is a Japanese Industrial Standard defining a set of kanji indexed by a pair of integers from 1 to 94 . This standard was previously known as JIS-C-6226....
were introduced to represent hiragana, kanji, and other characters. JIS_X_0208 has its own katakana area independently of one-byte character set such as JIS_X_0201. katakana of JIS_X_0208 takes two-byte (at least), so many (especially old) devices output these katakana as two-byte-width. This is why katakana of JIS_X_0201 is called halfwidth and JIS_X_0208, fullwidth. Therefore, most encodings have no halfwidth hiragana.

Although often said to be obsolete, in fact the halfwidth katakana are still used in many systems and encodings. For example, the titles of mini discs can only be entered in ASCII or halfwidth katakana, and halfwidth katakana were 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

Extended Unix Code

Extended Unix Code is a multibyte character encoding system used primarily for Japanese language, Korean language, and simplified Chinese.The structure of EUC is based on the ISO_2022 standard, which specifies a way to represent character sets containing a maximum of 94 characters, or 8836 characters, or 830584 characters, as sequences o...
, Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
and Shift-JIS

Shift-JIS

Shift JIS is a character encoding for the Japanese language originally developed by a Japanese company called ASCII in conjunction with Microsoft and standardized as JIS X 0208 Appendix 1....
have halfwidth katakana code as well as fullwidth. By contrast, ISO-2022-JP

ISO/IEC 2022

ISO 2022, more formally ISO/IEC 2022 "Information Technology?Character code structure and extension techniques", is an International Organization for Standardization standard specifying...
has no halfwidth katakana, and is mainly used over SMTP and NNTP. Halfwidth katakana are commonly used to save memory space.

Unicode

In Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
, fullwidth katakana occupy code points U+30A0 to U+30FF :

30A

30B

30C

30D

30E

30F

Encoded in this block along with the katakana are the nakaguro word separation middle dot, the choon vowel extender, the katakana iteration mark

Iteration mark

Iteration marks are characters or punctuation that represent a duplicated character or word.In Japanese language, iteration marks are used to represent a duplicated character....
s, and a ligature

Ligature

Ligature may refer to:* Ligature * Ligature , a characteristic notation style of the Medieval and Renaissance periods of music history* Ligature , a device used to attach a mouthpiece to a woodwind instrument...
of ?? sometimes used in vertical writing.

Halfwidth equivalents to the fullwidth katakana also exist. These are encoded within the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block (U+FF00–U+FFEF) , starting at U+FF65 and ending at U+FF9F (characters U+FF61–U+FF64 are halfwidth punctuation marks):

FF6

FF7

FF8

FF9

This block also includes the halfwidth dakuten and handakuten. The fullwidth versions of these characters are found in the hiragana block.

Code points 32D0 to 32FE list circled katakana. A circled ? (n) is not included.

32D

32E

32F

Katakana uses in non-Japanese languages

Ainu

Katakana is sometimes used to write the Ainu language

Ainu language

Hokkaido Ainu is an Ainu languages spoken by members of the Ainu people ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.Until the twentieth century, Ainu languages were also spoken throughout the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small numbers of people in the Kuril Islands....
. In Ainu language 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 and with an arbitrary vowel. For instance "up" is represented by ??? (?_?—u followed by small pu). Ainu also requires three additional sounds, represented by ?? ([tse]), ?? ([tu?]) and ?? ([tu?]). In Unicode, the Katakana Phonetic Extensions block (U+31F0–U+31FF) exists for Ainu language support. These characters are used mainly for the Ainu language only:

Taiwanese

Taiwanese kana (?? ??? ?? ?? ???) is a katakana-based writing system

Writing system

A writing system is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language....
once used to write Holo Taiwanese, when Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan is an island in East Asia. "Taiwan" is also commonly used to refer to the country governed by the Republic of China and to the ROC itself, which governs the island of Taiwan, Orchid Island and Green Island, Taiwan in the Pacific Ocean off the Taiwan coast, the Penghu islands in the Taiwan Strait, and Kinmen and the Matsu Islands...
was ruled

Taiwan under Japanese rule

The Japanese colonial period, Japanese rule or the Imperial Japanese occupation, in the context of Taiwan's history, refers to the period between 1895 and 1945 during which Taiwan was a Empire of Japan colony....
by Japan

Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
. It functioned as a phonetic guide to hanzi, much like furigana

Furigana

Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
or Zhuyin fuhao in Chinese

Chinese language

Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....
. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, including Hakka and Formosan languages

Formosan languages

The Formosan languages are the languages of the Taiwanese aborigines of Taiwan. Taiwanese aborigines currently comprise about 2% of the island's population....
.

Unlike Japanese or Ainu, Taiwanese kana are used similarly to the Zhùyin fúhào characters, with kana serving as initials, vowel medials and consonant finals, marked with tonal marks. A dot below the initial kana represented aspirated consonants, and ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ? and ? with a superpositional bar represented sounds found only in Taiwanese.

Example transcriptions of katakana and foreign languages

Medicine

Katakana	Romaji	Source word
????, ?????	bitamin, Vitamin
????	mineraru
?????	karushiumu
????	horumon

Computing

Katakana	Romaji	Source word	Kanji Kanji are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese language logogram along with hiragana , katakana , Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet.... and other words
???	mausu
?????	kibodo
??????	disupurei		?? gamen
????, ?????	pointa, pointa
???????	puroguramingu
??????	sofutowea
??????	hadowea
????????·????, ????????·????	operetingu shisutemu, opereitingu shisutemu	operating system Operating system An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....	????? kihonsofuto; OS oesu
???????	intanetto
???	webu

Personal names

from English names
Katakana	Romaji	Source name
???	jon
????	joji
???? or ???	meari, meri
???? or ????	maikeru, maikuru
????	pita
????	sukotto

from French names
Katakana	Romaji	Source name
???	mari
????	misheru

from German names
Katakana	Romaji	Source name
???	maria
????, ?????	mihaeru, mihyaeru

Regions

Katakana	Romaji	Kanji Kanji are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese language logogram along with hiragana , katakana , Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet....
????	afurika	???? Afurika
????	amerika	???? Amerika
???	ajia	??? Ajia
?????	yoroppa	??? Yoroppa ?? Oshu
???????	raten amerika	??? Chunanbei
?????	oseania	??? Taiyoshu

Nations

Katakana	Romaji	Source name	English name
??????	aruzenchin		Argentina
????	burajiru		Brazil
?????	burugaria	Balgariya	Bulgaria
???	kanada		Canada
???	cheko		Czech Republic
????	igirisu		England
??????	finrando		Finland
????	furansu		France
???	doitsu		Germany
????	oranda		Holland (The Netherlands)
???	indo		India
??????	indoneshia		Indonesia
??????	airurando		Ireland
????	itaria		Italy
?????	ritoania		Lithuania
?????	mareshia		Malaysia
????	mekishiko		Mexico
?????	firipin		Philippines
?????	porando		Poland
?????	porutogaru		Portugal
?????	rumania		Romania
???	roshia	Rossiya	Russia
??????	shingaporu		Singapore

Cities

Katakana	Romaji	Source name	English name
??????	berufasuto		Belfast
????	berurin		Berlin
?????	bukaresuto		Bucharest
????????	buenosu airesu		Buenos Aires
???	shikago		Chicago
???	hanoi		Hanoi
????	honkon		Hong Kong
????	risubon		Lisbon
????	rondon		London
??????	rosanzerusu		Los Angeles
?????	madoriddo		Madrid
???	manira		Manila
????	mosukuwa	Moskva	Moscow
??????	nyu yoku		New York
??	pari		Paris
???	puraha		Prague
???	roma		Rome
????????	sanfuranshisuko		San Francisco
????	shiatoru		Seattle
????	shidoni		Sydney
????	toronto		Toronto
?????	washinton		Washington

Katakana

Usage

Orthography

Table of katakana

History

Japanese language instruction

Computer encoding

Unicode

Katakana uses in non-Japanese languages

Ainu

Taiwanese

Example transcriptions of katakana and foreign languages

Medicine

Computing

Personal names

Regions

Nations

Cities

See also

External links