Katakana English

Long vowel sounds:
Katakana uses a - character after a syllable to lengthen the vowel sound. To pronounce this correctly, just hold the vowel for an extra beat.

biru - building
bi-ru - beer(pronounced as biiru)

Foreign words:
Probably the most important use of katakana is for writing words of foreign origin. Most foreign words are quite easy to represent using Japanese sounds, but there are plenty of foreign sounds which have no direct equivalent in Japanese.


ra / la:
The katakana ra/ ri/ ru/ re/ /ro are used to represent both ra / ri / ru / re / ro and also la / li / lu / le / lo.

ieroo - yellow

fa / fi / fu / fe / fo:
The only Japanese syllable to start with an English f-sound is fu; there's no single character for any of fa, fi, fe or fo. You can expect to see the katakana for ha, hi, he and ho used instead (as in ko-hi, above) but you will also see, in some katakana words, fu followed by a small vowel:

famirii maato - Family Mart (convenience store chain)

ba / va:
The consonant v doesn't exist in Japanese - instead, the katakana for ba / bi / bu / be / bo are used. Hence bideo (video), One interesting alternative, though, which seems to be becoming more common these days, is the use of a katakana u plus two dashes in the top-right corner (like a voiced ga or da, for instance) to represent the (non-Japanese) syllable vu:

vo-karisuto - vocalist

Now, from a linguistic point of view, this is nonsense - there's no such thing as a voiced or unvoiced vowel. So don't think of it that way - just remember that u plus two dashes is vu. As the above example suggests, this vu syllable can be combined with a small vowel to produce va / vi / ve / vo - but in practice, ba / bi / bu / be / bo are much more common.

w-sounds and y-sounds:
The only Japanese syllables starting with a w-sound are wa and wo. Even then, the katakana for wo isn't used very often. Instead you can expect to see a katakana u followed by a small i, e or o. Similarly, a ye sound tends to be written with a katakana i followed by a small e:


uo-kuman - Walkman (TM)

th:
There's no th-sound in Japanese. Z-sounds or s-sounds are typically used instead.

Ex: "The Beach" -> "za biichi".
The name Gareth is spelled garesu in katakana.

open syllables:
Most syllables in Japanese are open; that is, they end in a vowel sound. In fact, the only closed syllable is n. This means that, unless a word ends in a vowel or an n,
Ex: Chris -> kurisu. Similarly, Paul becomes po-ru; three syllables and with an extraneous -u sound on the end.





Vocabulary:
Sutaa-to - Start
nekutai - necktie
erebe-ta - elevator,lift
esukare-ta - escalator
toire- toilet
ka-do - Card
terehonka-do - Telephone card
no-to - notebookbo-rupen - ballpoint pen
kamera- camera
konpyu-ta -computer
chokore-to - chocolate
ko-hi - coffee
bideo - video
sakka - soccer
wain - wine

ie- eye
ki-key(kagi in hiragana)
ko-ku- coke
kisu- kiss
kesu- case
tesuto - test
aisu- ice
ko-to - coat
a-to -art
auto -out
na-su - nurse
hani - honey
hitto - hit
fuan - fan(fua is pronounced as fa not fua)
ha-fu - half
man- man
mi-to - meat
mekishiko -mexico
yafu - yahoo
toyota- toyota
aisukuri-mu- icecream
terebi -TV
haro- - hello
hawai - hawaii island
tawa- - tower
chikin - chicken
ko-n - corn
washinton - washington

biru - building
biiru - beer
famirii maato- family mart
ieroo - yellow

hanbaagaa - Hamburger
makudonarudo - McDonald

ドル - doro - Doller(US doller
セント - sento - cent
ケーキ = kekki- cake
フィルム - firumu -film