Katakana
カタカナ

1. Katakana Chart

Memorize the reading of all 46 katakana characters as quickly as you can.

2. Writing of the Characters

1) General Rules of Stroke Orders

Both kana (hiragana and katakana) and Kanji have the same general rules of stroke orders.

a. Write from top to bottom, and left to right

top line first	left line first

b. Horizontal before vertical

When horizontal and vertical lines cross, horizontal lines are usually written before vertical lines.

c. Character-spanning strokes last

Vertical line that pass through other strokes are written after the strokes passed through are written.

Practice writing Katakana

When you write Japanese characters, pay special attention to:

a. length of each the line
b. small hooks
c. how the lines curve
d. angles of lines
e. space between lines

3. Katakana with Diacritical Marks

You can create 23 additional sounds by adding diacritical marks. With short parallel lines, the unvoiced consonants [k], [s], [t], and [h] become voiced consonants [g], [z], [d], and [b] respectively. Additionally, by adding a small circle to [h], the sound changes to [p].

4. Transcribing Contracted Sounds

When small 「ヤ」「ユ」「ヨ」are added to the letters in the 「イ」column except for 「イ」, it transcribe contracted sounds. Contracted sounds are single syllable.

5. Other Rules

1) Long Vowels

The long vowels are written with 「ー」symbol.

ケーキ　ke e ki (cake)
アイスクリーム　a i su ku ri i mu (ice scram)　
コンピューター　　ko n pyu u ta a (computer)

2) Additional combination with small letters for foreign sounds

These sound combination was created for transcribing foreign words because Japanese language did not have them.

3) The sound [v]

[v] sound is usually written with 「バビブベボ」as in 「バージニア」(ba a ji ni a: Virginia), however, sometimes it is written with「ヴ」letter to be closer to the pronunciation of the original language.

ヴィーナス：vi i na su (Venus）