katakana

    Keywords: Culture & History

Katakana (カタカナ) is one of the two sets of syllable writing used in Japanese. Katakana is most often used for foreign terms, foreign names.

Today's Japanese is written in a mixture of three writing systems, two of them syllable sets, hiragana (the squiggly letters), katakana (the edgy ones) and kanji (the small pictures with the many strokes).

When looking at a Japanese word, the kanji can give a hint about the original meaning or the concepts involved in the expression. Some go terms are written in katakana.

Examples of words in katakana: ピアノ バナナ テンイス ゴルフ コーヒー ビール


See also:


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