Question
I just finished hiragana and my teacher told me katakana is next. I keep seeing katakana on menus and product labels in Tokyo, and the shapes look sharper and a bit harder to tell apart. Before I start drilling, I want to know what the chart actually is. What is the katakana chart?
Answer by Professional Japanese Teacher
カタカナ（かたかな）
Katakana
The Japanese script used mainly for foreign and loanwords.
Good timing — once hiragana clicks, katakana usually follows much faster than students expect. The chart is the same 46-sound grid as hiragana: five vowels (a, i, u, e, o) across the top, then rows for k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, w, plus a standalone n. Same sounds, sharper shapes. You will see katakana almost any time a word came from another language — pan (bread), koohii (coffee, written コーヒー), takushii (taxi, written タクシー).
Notice that long mark ー in コーヒー and タクシー. It is a katakana-only symbol that simply stretches the vowel before it, which is why we write koohii, not kohi, and takushii, not tekishi. Get into the habit of catching that bar from day one — it changes the word.
One more tip that saves most of my students a headache. The pair shi and tsu, and the pair n and so, look similar at a glance. The trick is stroke direction: shi and n flow upward from below, tsu and so flick downward from above. Trace each one slowly with your finger, and the difference settles in a few days.
