Kana 1-5 Katakana Part 1

1-5 Katakana Part 1

Katakana is the other Japanese phonetic alphabet. It contains 46 syllables and works and sounds the same way as hiragana.

It is mainly used for foreign loan-words from Western languages, such as foreign names, the names of foreign places ad onomatopoeic words.

And it is also used to replace unfamiliar kanji of things like fish or produce at a market or restaurant.  

Here’s a katakana chart on JapaneseUp.

1. Click on the link and read the characters in the table from left to right.
2. To remember the order of the characters with vowels in the table, you can use the following memory aid “Kana Signs, Take Note How Much You Read and Write them.”
3. The first letter of each of the words corresponds to the letters in the hiragana alpahabet, e.g. K S T N H M Y R W.
4. Then, it is simply a matter of pairing the letters from the memory aid with each of the characters in ‘a i u e o’ and you will have remembered all of the basic characters.
5. So, start with the vowels, combine the letters and vowels and end with the character ‘n’ and there you have it.
6. You can also check how the katakana strokes are written.  

1-5-1 Katakana ア Row

The first thing to do is to learn the characters ‘a’ ‘i’ ‘u’ ‘e’ and ‘o’ as these are the building blocks for many of the other characters.

Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the katakana characters.

ア a

イ i

ウ u

エ e

オ o

1-5-2 Katakana カ Row

Once you have mastered ‘a’ to ‘o’ you can then go on to learn ‘ka’ to ‘ko’.

Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the katakana characters.

カ ka

キ ki

ク ku

ケ ke

コ ko

1-5-3 Katakana サ Row

Next, please learn the characters ‘sa’ to ‘so’.

Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the katakana characters.

サ sa

シ shi

ス su

セ se

ソ so

1-5-4 Katakana タ Row

Now, please learn the characters ‘ta’ to ‘to’.

Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the katakana characters.

タ ta

チ chi

ツ tsu

テ te

ト to

1-5-5 Katakana ナ Row

For this lesson, please learn the characters ‘na’ to ‘no’.

Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the katakana characters.

ナ na

ニ ni

ヌ nu

ネ ne

ノ no

1-5-6 Katakana ハ Row

Next, please learn the characters ‘ha’ to ‘ho’.

Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the katakana characters.

ハ ha

ヒ hi

フ fu

ヘ he

ホ ho

1-5-7 Katakana マ Row

Now, please learn the characters ‘ma’ to ‘mo’.

Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the katakana characters.

マ ma

ミ mi

ム mu

メ me

モ mo

1-5-8 Katakana ヤ Row

For this lesson, please learn the characters ‘ya’ to ‘yo’.

Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the katakana characters.

ヤ ya

ユ yu

ヨ yo

1-5-9 Katakana ラ Row

Next, please learn the characters ‘ra’ to ‘ro’.

Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the katakana characters.

ラ ra

リ ri

ル ru

レ re

ロ ro

1-5-10 Katakana ワ Row

Congrats, you are now on the final stretch of the hiragana table! Please learn the characters ‘wa’ to ‘n’.

Take a piece of paper and pen, write out everything yourself to master the stroke order and memorize the katakana characters.

ワ wa

ヲ wo

ン n

1-5-11 Katakana Quiz

Are you sure you’ve memorized all 46 katakana characters correctly?

Play this katakana game to test your memory This game has no time limit and you can even opt to show the character strokes.