0.6 Katakana I — ア to ト, and the words you already own — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the first twenty katakana, ア through ト . Keep apart the four pairs where a katakana looks like the hiragana of a different sound — カ / か is fine, セ / せ is fine, but ス and す will fight you. Read twenty-four borrowed words and work out the English behind each one. Say why the borrowed word is often shorter than the English and always has more beats. Prerequisites : lesson 0.5 — all of hiragana, including voicing marks, small ゃゅょ ( ya yu yo ), long vowels and small っ . Katakana is the same forty-six sounds in a second set of shapes, so there is nothing new to understand: the grid is the grid you already know. What is new is that from this lesson on you can start reading words you already own. Katakana is where the English in your head becomes useful. The same grid, sharper shapes Hiragana was made by writing whole kanji in flowing cursive until they became round. Katakana was made differently — by taking a fragment of a kanji and using it as shorthand — which is why katakana is angular where hiragana is curved. You will see the actual kanji each one came from in lesson 12.1. For now, here are the first four rows: Row Characters Read as vowels ア イ ウ エ オ a i u e o k-row カ キ ク ケ コ ka ki ku ke ko s-row サ シ ス セ ソ sa shi su se so t-row タ チ ツ テ ト ta chi tsu te to The same three cells have drifted — shi , chi , tsu — for the same reason, and the voicing marks work exactly as they do in hiragana: カ → ガ , サ → ザ , タ → ダ . The small ッ is a small ツ and does the same job as the small っ : one beat of silence. Where they help and where they hurt Four of these twenty are close enough to their hiragana counterpart to learn free, and you should notice that now so that you spend your effort on the other sixteen. Pair Relationship カ and か The katakana is the hiragana without its final tick. Same sound. Free. キ and き Same skeleton, straightened. Same sound. Free. セ and せ Same shape, one stroke shorter. Same sound. Free. ニ and に Coming in lesson 0.7; also nearly the same. Now the dangerous ones. These look like a hiragana you already know, but they are a different sound . Learn these four as traps, deliberately: Katakana The hiragana it resembles ス = su looks like ス could be ヌ ; and it resembles え in outline. It is su . ト = to resembles し with a tick, and the Latin capital letter that follows S . It is to . エ = e is built from the kanji 工 and looks like a Latin I with serifs. It is e . オ = o resembles the kanji for "not yet" and the hiragana す turned around. It is o . The worst pair in the whole of katakana, ソ against ン , is in this lesson only halfway: ソ is here and ン arrives in lesson 0.8. Look at ソ now and remember that its two strokes go down and to the left . That will matter in two lessons' time. What happens to an English word when Japanese borrows it Three things, and all three are mechanical enough to reverse. Every consonant gets a vowel. Japanese syllables end in a vowel (or in ン ), so a consonant cluster has to be broken up. English test has an st at the end; Japanese cannot say that, so it becomes テスト — te-su-to , three beats. English desk becomes デスク , de-su-ku . The vowel inserted is almost always u , except after t and d , where it is o . Sounds Japanese lacks are mapped onto the nearest one it has. There is no l , so l becomes the ラ -row. There is no th , so it becomes s or z . There is no v , so it usually becomes b . Lesson 2.1 gives you the full table and turns it into a rule you can run in both directions. The beat count goes up, a lot. Strike is one syllable in English. In Japanese it is ストライク ( sutoraiku ), five beats. This is the single most useful thing to internalise about loanwords: the word is the same, the rhythm is not, and if you say the English rhythm you will not be understood even though you are using a Japanese word. Read it back Twenty-four borrowed words, all spelled with the twenty characters of this lesson. Read each one aloud, count the beats, and then work out the English. Two of them are from German rather than English, which is a hint that lesson 2.4 exists. Katakana English behind it アイス ice — but in Japanese it means ice cream アジア Asia アシスト assist エコ eco — clipped from "ecology" オアシス oasis カオス chaos カカオ cacao ガス gas — via Dutch, not English キス kiss キック kick キオスク kiosk キット kit クイズ quiz ココア cocoa コスト cost ゲスト guest サイズ size サイト site — in practice always a website スイス Switzerland — from German Schweiz スタジオ studio セット set ソックス socks タイツ tights ダイエット diet デスク desk テスト test テキスト text — and also a textbook ドア door ドイツ Germany — from German Deutsch ドット dot Look at アイス , サイト and テキスト again. The pronunciation is predictable from the English; the meaning has narrowed. A borrowed word arrives carrying one of its English senses and leaves the others behind, so アイス is not ice in a glass and サイト is not a building site. That narrowing is the subject of lesson 2.4, and it is the reason "you already know this word" is only three-quarters true. Watch it A video that covers the same ground as this lesson. Press it to play (playback connects to YouTube). "Pin it to the screen" lets you watch while you read. Learn Katakana in 3 minutes! Part 1 Kiko's Language School (3:24, 2025) In English. A three-minute run through the katakana in order. Katakana - Complete Stroke Order and Pronunciation Japanese Beginners (7:35, 2020) In English. Stroke order and sound, one character at a time. Go deeper — when you have time Longer lectures and talks for those who want more. You do not need to watch them to finish this lesson. Check the length and the note, and pick only what interests you. ALL katakana in 28 MINUTES! (Complete Beginner Lesson) トム — Easy Japanese（28:19、2026） In English. A 28-minute session that goes through all the katakana. You do not need to watch it to finish this lesson. Practice Write the row. From memory, write the four katakana rows with their readings. Then write the hiragana for each one beside it and mark the four pairs that are nearly the same