Learning a new writing system is the coolest brainteaser in the world. Whether you are simply curious about the mysterious shapes or whether you intend to start studying the language, Alphabeautiful's intuitive method will help you read those characters in just a few hours.
Here are a few things you need to know about Katakana before you start.
Katakana is one of the 3 writing systems used in Japanese. Japanese combines Chinese characters, known as Kanji, with two other writing systems: Hiragana and Katakana. Hiragana and Katakana are syllabaries — each character represents either a vowel sound (a, e, i, o, u) or a consonant-vowel combination.
Katakana is used for foreign words like Ronaldo ⚽, Leclerc or computer.
Hiragana, on the other hand, is used to clarify the pronunciation of Kanji characters and for grammatical endings. It's what young Japanese students use when they first learn Kanji, which is why traditionally Hiragana is learned first.
Japanese words often mix all three writing systems, so if you're planning to study Japanese later, you will have to master both Hiragana and Katakana (as well as a large amount of Kanji characters).
We recommend starting with our Hiragana course.
Romaji is an (official) way to write Japanese sounds using the Roman alphabet. For example, "shi" is the romaji for し, which is pronounced like "shee". It's not as precise as phonetic characters — which are more often used by linguists — but it's the popular method for learning and teaching Japanese.
Our courses are entirely based on romaji.
Katakana has 46 characters. Each one represents either a vowel (a, i, u, e, o) or a consonant-vowel combination like "na", "ki", or "po". You'll also come across small accents (diacritics) and two special characters that tweak sounds or lengthen vowels or consonants.
Don't worry, our progressive approach based on exercises will help you read all of these characters in just a few days.
Lessons include romaji "transcriptions" that give you a good idea of how to pronounce each character.We have also added audio sounds for convenience but they are not essential to reading practice.
If you want to study Japanese beyond this reading course, it is highly recommended to work with a native teacher or speaker.
Not exactly. All characters are essentially of the same size. However, you'll see later in the course that a smaller version of some characters exists when they are combined with others. For example, よ (YO) in ちよ (CHIYO) is the same size as the first character, but in ちょ (CHO), よ is smaller to indicate a blended sound
Like any writing system, Katakana can also be written in different fonts or more artistic styles — handwritten, with decorations (serif), or without (sans-serif). To help you understand those subtleties, we included a variety of fonts in our practice exercises.
At the moment this course is dedicated to reading. You can easily learn to read first without knowing how to draw the characters perfectly.
But we recognise that drawing characters is a fun and relaxing activity and it helps you memorize them, painting on a simple blank sheet can yield beautiful results.