0.7 Katakana II — ナ to モ, and the three pairs everyone confuses — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read fifteen more katakana, the n-, h- and m-rows, taking you to thirty-five of the forty-six. Tell apart the three pairs that catch everyone: ソ against ン , シ against ツ , and ク against タ . Use stroke direction, not shape, to decide which of a pair you are looking at. Read twenty-eight more borrowed words, including several whose meaning has shifted away from the English. Prerequisites : lesson 0.6 — the first twenty katakana, and what borrowing does to an English word. Fifteen easy characters and one genuinely hard thing. The hard thing is not the fifteen: it is that katakana contains three pairs of characters that differ by a few degrees of angle, and small print, handwriting and bad screen fonts will all conspire to hide the difference. This lesson gives you a way of deciding that does not depend on the shape. Three more rows Row Characters Read as n-row ナ ニ ヌ ネ ノ na ni nu ne no h-row ハ ヒ フ ヘ ホ ha hi fu he ho m-row マ ミ ム メ モ ma mi mu me mo Two of these are almost free. ニ is the hiragana に with the loop removed, and it is also the kanji for "two", which is a useful thing to notice a phase early. ヘ is visually identical to the hiragana へ — the only character in the entire system where the two scripts agree completely, so the only way to tell which script you are in is the company it keeps. The voicing marks carry over unchanged: ハ → バ → パ , and so on down the row. And フ is the same lip-made [ɸ] you met in lesson 0.3, which matters here because フ is what Japanese uses for an English f . The three dangerous pairs Do not try to learn these as shapes. Learn them as directions of travel , because that is what actually distinguishes them, and it is the only cue that survives handwriting. Pair The deciding stroke ソ so / ン n Both are a short mark plus a long one. In ソ the long stroke goes downward from the top , so the mark sits above it. In ン the long stroke sweeps upward to the right , so the mark sits to its left. シ shi / ツ tsu Three marks each. シ stacks its two short marks vertically on the left and sweeps up from below. ツ lines its two short marks up horizontally along the top and sweeps down from there. ク ku / タ ta タ is ク with one extra stroke through it. If there is a stroke crossing the inside, it is ta . The シ / ツ pair has a mnemonic that actually works, because it is not a mnemonic but the truth: both characters are simplifications of their hiragana, and the hiragana tell you the direction. し sweeps up from the bottom left, so シ does too. つ starts at the top and comes down, so ツ does too. The same argument works for ソ , which descends like the top of そ . How much does this matter in practice? Enough that Japanese people get it wrong: hand-lettered shop signs with ソ for ン are a small genre of internet joke. For you the cost is real and specific — misreading one of these turns a word you know into gibberish, and you will blame your vocabulary instead of your eyes. When a borrowed word refuses to make sense, check these three pairs first. Twenty-eight more borrowed words All spelled with the thirty-five katakana you now have. Read each aloud, count the beats, then find the English. Katakana English behind it ナイフ naifu knife ナッツ nattsu nuts ニス nisu varnish — clipped from Dutch vernis ネクタイ nekutai necktie ネット netto net — in practice, the internet ノウハウ nōhau know-how ハイ hai high ハイテク haiteku high-tech ハム hamu ham ヒット hitto hit ヒップ hippu hip ヘア hea hair — used of hairstyle, not of a single hair ホット hotto hot — in a café, a hot coffee マイク maiku microphone マスク masuku mask — the surgical kind マット matto mat ミス misu mistake — from "miss", not "Miss" ミニ mini メタン metan methane — the th became t メモ memo memo; a note to yourself モデム modemu modem テニス tenisu tennis バス basu bus — and also bath バナナ banana バイク baiku motorbike — never a bicycle ビデオ bideo video ビスケット bisuketto biscuit ベスト besuto best — and also a waistcoat ボス bosu boss ポスト posuto postbox; a post or position ポテト poteto potato — usually means chips ペット petto pet パス pasu pass ピアノ piano バケツ baketsu bucket ダム damu dam Four of these are worth arguing with. バイク is a motorbike and never a bicycle, so telling a Japanese colleague you came by バイク claims more than you meant. バス is both "bus" and "bath", because Japanese has no distinction between the two English vowels. ミス is a mistake, from the verb, not a form of address. And ベスト is either "best" or a waistcoat, which are two unrelated English words that arrived at the same Japanese spelling. That last kind — two English words collapsing into one Japanese word — happens because Japanese has fewer vowels and no consonant clusters, so it has fewer possible shapes to put borrowings into. It is the flip side of the bargain: the borrowed vocabulary is cheap for you to read, and occasionally ambiguous in a way the English is not. Read it back Ten words with one of the three dangerous pairs in them. Read each aloud, and say which member of the pair you are looking at before you check. Katakana What it says ソックス socks — the first character descends, so it is so ナッツ nuts — the last character has its marks along the top, so tsu テニス tennis — no dangerous pair here; read it to reset your eye バケツ bucket — tsu again, marks along the top マスク mask — ク with no crossing stroke, so ku ネクタイ necktie — ク then タ : the second one has the crossing stroke タイツ tights — ta then tsu ミス mistake — two beats only ハイテク high-tech — ku at the end, not ta メタン methane — ends with ン , which sweeps up to the right. Compare ソ . Practice Write the rows. Write the seven katakana rows you now know, with their readings, and put the matching hiragana beside each character. Read them aloud. Read all thirty-six borrowed words out loud. Then read the ten words in "Read it back" out loud twice, naming the dangerous character each time before you say the word. Work from these: ナイフ , ノウハウ , ヘア , ミニ , バナナ , ポスト . Which is it? For each, name the character and say which way its long stroke travels: ソ · ン · シ · ツ . One extra s