Talk:Katakana/Archives/2012

This is an archive of past discussions about Katakana. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

IPA

Isn't the IPA considered the standard for phonetic transcription of sounds? It seems to me like the chart should use IPA characters rather than romanization with the latin alphabet. Can anybody (preferably a native speaker of a common dialect) add IPA values into the chart? ›»rho (talk) 04:59, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

The IPA is considered the standard or most common standard for phonetic transcription here on Wikipedia, but the focus of this article is not phonetics. The focus of the article is to give knowledge of a script, and this includes phonetics as a secondary or supporting element. An article on Japanese phonetics needs to include at least some IPA, but this doesn't need it. Remember that articles about Russia simply must use the most common romanizations of Cyrillic so the reader will understand the words, whereas IPA representing Russian pronunciation will in many cases mean nothing to most readers of English text. Just the same, we need romanization for all articles on Japanese issues, and IPA for only the times we inform about phonetics and phonemics. Romanization of Japanese is simply part of the English langauge. Romanization is also part of the Japanese language (even including Hepburn, which is best for those who aren't native Japanese speakers). This makes it very relevant. Replacing romanization with IPA would simply be an obstacle to those who want to learn about the katakana script. Anyone can simply look up "Japanese Phonology" if that's what she wants to learn. These are all part of why Hepburn romanization is the standard on Wikipedia for rendering Japanese when not focusing directly on the phonetic issues of the language.(Ejoty (talk) 15:15, 25 August 2009 (UTC))

Okay, this helps me understand the issue better, thanks.›»rho (talk) 22:26, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Dude. This might not seem like a big deal, but I think it's extremely cool that you read my whole answer AND said thanks for it. Peace. (Ejoty (talk) 14:22, 15 September 2009 (UTC))

ジ and ディ (デ)

It would be nice if you could mention that ji and di are often exchanged. Like ラジオ "rajio" = radio. Which can also be googled as ラデオ. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.192.245.128 (talk) 10:31, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Linguistically speaking, that is not correct. Just because you can Google it as such, doesn't mean that is correct in Japanese. ラジオ(radio)is always ラジオ. The only exception I've heard of a word using the word 'radio' that is transliterated differently, is the British band Radiohead, which transliterated as レディオヘッド. But that is it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.173.251.124 (talk) 05:38, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

headcuff

I'd just like to add that the katakana "ga" symbol all throughout the page is written incorrectly. It is shown as ガ, but that is not right. It's supposed to have the two apostrophes above it, not the maru. I would correct it, but I don't know the encryption. But if I'm wrong, whatever, I've just never seen the katakana ga symbol written that way is all. Teachers never mentioned that either. Tokimasen ka.

If it's wrong, take it up with the people who design Japanese fonts. That's a character, not a graphic. Wikipedia has no control over that. — Gwalla | Talk 07:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Umm, but that character does have the two "apostrophes" above it, not a maru (handakuten). May be you are just not looking closely enough. As far as I can tell, there's not really a way to accidentally type in a "ka" with a handakuten above it.--Sotaru 11:43, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh yea you're right. My bad. What are the apostrophes called actually? I think it was the size of the font/resolution I have on my computer that made it look like a handakuten. Thanks. --headcuff 4:27,2 February 2007 (UTC)

Dakuten, or voicing mark. The handakuten is the "half-voicing mark". — Gwalla | Talk 05:55, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Remember, when characters are that small, the rule of thumb is that handakuten look like squares and dakuten look like diamonds. --Clorox (talk) 03:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Hifuka

I'm not sure if the word for dermatologist is correct, as it looks to be vandalised. the word used is hifuka, which is suspiciously like American vulgar slang. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.153.72.224 (talk • contribs) .

It is correct, check the Japanese article if you want to make sure. Although, it should really be hifukai for dermatologist, otherwise it just means dermatology. I fixed it. —Philip N.✉ 21:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

First of all, I support this fix(dermatologist -> dermatology). FYI, we can see many words hifuka on signs of japanese hospitals for Department of Dermatology. This meaning is most common for hifuka in Japanese. Still, hifuka for dermatology is also used and dosen't sounds like slang. (but is not strict term. hifukagaku is more suitable word for Dermatology). Canadie 01:48, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Empty cells, not colspans

I replaced the empty table cells that spanned more than one column with multiple empty cells. Since the row and column placements actually have meaning (except for ン), it makes more sense for each empty cell to represent one "missing" kana than for them to be combined.

This also permits this table to be (say) copied and pasted into a spreadsheet, or transposed, or have a column cut, without the columns getting out of sync.

Matuszek 21:55, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

It seems to be OK. By the way, it is not necessary any more to use numerical values any more, you can just insert the UTF8 into the page directly. --DannyWilde 01:27, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Another new katakana for foreign character

Please forgive intrusion, errors, any breaches of etiquette, but -- I don't know how else to go about this. I have here a book, ISBN #4473014304, published by Tankosha in 1995, where the name "König" has consistently been rendered into the kana as: ケーニッヒ. Someone more knowledgeable than I might wish to look into that reduplicated final -hi. I am a librarian trying to catalogue this and am at a loss as to the correct Romaji transliteration (Kēnihhi??). Thank you for your patience and forebearance. -- non-user, StJ Tremayne, 05:30, 13 September 2005.

That double-h in place of ch is common in German names. Bach, for example, comes out as バッハ (Bahha); Mach is マッハ (Mahha). "Kēnihhi" is probably the correct romanization according to the system Wikipedia uses. (Of course there are many other systems.)

The doubling of the "h" in König, Bach, Mach (or the underlying small tsu) is probably the kana that best fits those German names.

Related sounds in various languages are hard to express in Japanese, so Khruschev becomes フルシチョフ (Furushichofu). Ali Khamenei is アリー・ハーメネイー (Arī Hāmeneī). The Japanese Wikipedia has references to イツハク・パールマン (Itsuhaku Pāruman).

Typing ケーニッヒ into the Search box of the Japanese Wikipedia brought up three hits: one for Rudolph, one for Karen, and one for a company in the automobile industry. The article on Rudolph gives his name in the original German, not a double transliteration; the others give no romanization.

Fg2 07:20, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I saw that the article did not mention anything about the small tsu, so I added a small bit. Please check this, as I know very little Japanese. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Edits by Ryoske

The recent edits by Ryoske seem to be speculation not based on any facts. Further, several of his/her statements are extremely dubious. For example, the stuff about "gomi" being because of Japanese people associating litter with foreigners sounds like utter drivel to me. For the time being, I've commented out the problematic paragraph.--DannyWilde 06:59, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the passage is highly speculative, and rather dubious. There are many opinions as to why words are being katakanaized. Some people just say it makes them eye-catching and "cool". The sentence: "The established use of katakana as being to write foreign loanwords has become somewhat of a myth spread through overly simplistic explanation of its usage in education of Japanese as a second language." is nonsense. The use of katakana for loanwords was set by the education ministry 60 years ago. Nothing mythical about it. --JimBreen 23:37, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Is there anything in the paragraph that can be salvaged into something useful, or should it just be deleted? At the moment it is commented out, since it doesn't make much sense, but Wikipedia asks to modify things rather than delete them. Can it be modified into something worth saying? Or should it just be removed?--DannyWilde 00:50, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

I don't deny it was officially established as being used for loanwords. But what I mean is that when Japanese is taught as a second language, the bread-and-butter rules are taught that hiragana is used for native words, and katakana for foreign loanwords. The "myths" of the Jōyō Kanji list are described in that article, so why shouldn't the "only used for foreign words" misunderstanding not be considered a myth? What I should have written is that, although katakana is mostly used for foreign words, other usages include:...--Ryoske 07:05:45, 2005-08-27 (UTC)

I can't find any support for anything you added to the katakana article. See sci.lang.japan newsgroup for a discussion about your article. I don't like deleting stuff without a very good reason, but your comments in the katakana article seem highly dubious and speculative to me.

You mean that all my edits were bad?! Ouch. That paragraph wasn't the only edit I made - I added in the comment about Modern Chinese loanwords, the stylistic purposes as well as the use of the chōon in ローソク. But I forgot to tag them - my bad. I only joined yesterday, so I haven't entirely gotten used to things yet. Also, sorry about that stupid gomi comment - I heard someone speculate that on a message board, I think it was Japan Today. I found this Japanese article today suggesting as to why gomi is written in katakana: [1] It basically suggests that it is written in katakana to highlight that it is dirty, smelly, dangerous and otherwise unpleasant. 兎に角、出々しで躓いて済みません!--Ryoske 10:02:03, 2005-08-27 (UTC).

I've read the sci.lang.japan thread. I have had a native Japanese speaker suggest that 椅子 is considered a foreign object.

I'll take care not to write such baseless speculative comments in future.

I've found another Japanese article [2] which supports the argument that in the absence of kanji, writing words in katakana makes them easier to read.--Ryoske 05:58:55, 2005-08-28 (UTC)

Sorry to cut the colons short. I think that is true. The problem is about the foreign nature of gomi or isu. Anyway, why don't you try to salvage what you wrote in the light of other people's comments, and maybe something useful will come from this discussion.--DannyWilde 06:37, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

I've just attempted to salvage the "nutty" paragraph in light of all your comments. I've added those two sources in, some examples of katakana in verbs and adjectives, and gotten rid of the stupid ゴミ comment as well as the stuff about タバコ, as I thought it was unnecessary. On another note, I wonder if I should get rid of those examples of Chinese loanwords using katakana? I'm sure there's a list of Chinese and Korean loanwords already, but I just can't find it.--Ryoske 10:20:27, 2005-08-28 (UTC)

While we're on the topic of speculative and improbable bits, where did this come from? "In this case they may indicate 'words spoken with a foreign accent'." adamrice 15:15, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Ryoske added most of the paragraph back again. I really do not think he is correct. I moved the examples he gave into "emphasis". Incidentally Ryoske made some edits to the kanji page as well, some of which I disagree with. The characters in "gaiji" may translate to "external characters" but I have a lot of doubts whether "gaiji" are called "external characters". The only links I found on the web which supported that view were links to Wikipedia or copies of it. Also, Ryoske edited the hiragana page, but I'm not sure whether I agree with his edits there. These pages are fairly mature and it would be good to be cautious about adding lots of stuff to them. In the case of "gomi" I think it's just being used for emphasis - I haven't seen any evidence of anything else. Anyway I expect this will all get changed back again, but I'd like to register a protest about it. --DannyWilde 23:19, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, "external characters" is exactly how Ken Lunde refers to gaiji in his authoritative book Understanding Japanese Information Processing, so I don't have a problem with that. The rest of it, yes. The Japan-related pages in Wikipedia have for some time had the mixed blessing of contributors with more enthusiasm than scholarship. adamrice 13:56, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. This is going into the realms of nitpicking, but I have a copy of the same book, and I found that Ken Lunde used the term, but he says that "These are referred to here as external characters". He doesn't say "These are called external characters". So it seems to be his translation. Can you find anyone else who uses the term? I had a rapid web search, but the only references to "external characters" I found were copies of the Wikipedia kanji page. Further, I found "gaiji" being used in romaji in some fairly solid web resources. Actually even Ken Lunde himself uses it on the next page of his book! I don't think there is enough justification for the "external characters" translation to put it into the kanji page. --DannyWilde 00:25, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

Older comments follow

All of these characters except VA ヷ, VI ヸ, VE ヹ, VO ヺ, and Katakana middle dot ・ are showing up in my browser. Anyone have any suggestions? --Koyaanis Qatsi

(Originally I listed the incorrect characters above, and 63.192.137.xxx corrected them. Thanks. --Koyaanis Qatsi)

You should as well indicate the Operating system and Web browser you are using... -- HJH

The characters VA, VI, VE, VO are included in the Unicode standard but they are not in the "traditional" Katakana set. Apparently, they are new characters added to the Japanese language (any Japanese native to confirm this?), that may explain why the browser fails to display them until the fonts are updated with the new glyphs. On my IE 5.5, the missing characters are shown as dots, but they are different from the middle dot ・ character.

I'm sure it's a matter of having the right fonts installed. I can see them all correctly, but I have the entire set of Chinese Han ideographic fonts installed. These few characters may not be present in some limited Japanese font set. Either get a more complete Japanese font, or bite the bullet and install the whole CJK set. --LDC

Ok, thanks. I had something I thought was a font set up, but everytime I went into a browser it brought up a window asking which keyboard set I wanted, and after that got tiresome enough I uninstalled it through DOS, since Windows wouldn't cooperate about it. --Koyaanis Qatsi

This table is quite confusing. Index (name) should be on the left, and value (symbol) on the right. Or at least column pair should be better separated, like in bold. Is there any particular reason why it's reversed ? --Taw

I'd also like to see the table reorganized. In the traditional Japanese layout ( begins in the upper right with A, with five kana per column ( A E U E O in the first column, KA, KI KU KE KO in the second, etc. ) This format does naturally group the kana with the beginning consonant sound, which is very helpful. Note that I wouldn't want to see this format exactly, just noting some things which seem helpful about it. I also prefer the Hepburn ( SA SHI SU SE SO, TA CHI TSU TE TO) romanizations, but that's a style decision. -- Olof

The table goes from right to left and from top to bottom , just as Japanese is written. The syllables "va, vi, ve, vu" are not traditional. They have been added to accomodate the Japanese version of foreign words. In fact, the only one I remember seeing is "vi," in "whiskey."

I don't understand this comment: In my browsers ( IE Mac OS 9 and IE Windows NT ) I see a table going from left to right. Furthemore, the contemporary kana representation of 'whiskey' is usually with U and small I : ウィスキー -- Olof

What are small KA and small KE use for ? --User:Taw

Small KE is used in some place names, even though it is usually pronounced 'ga'. For example, Kasumigaseki is written 霞ヶ関, Ichigaya is 市ヶ谷

Small KA is used in counting word combinations , i.e. to write ヵ月 to mean number of months or ヵ国 to mean number of countries. -- Olof

FYI The counter prefix ka Japman 09:17, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I wrote about little KA and KE on ja:wikipedia(in Japanese). It's believed that these two characters are not KATAKANA strictly, and small KE was derived from KANJI character '个' (KA or KO, simplified from '箇') . That's why small 'KE' can't be read as 'KE' usually, and is often read as 'KA' or 'KO'. I believe that this confusion derives small 'KA' accidentally. In fact, small 'KA' can be used as small 'KE' alternatively only when small 'KE' is read as 'KA'.Canadie 07:20, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Recently some special characters have been added for transliteration of the Ainu language.

So, uh, what are they? --Brion 17:34 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

Katakana Phonetic Extensions Japman 09:17, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

VA, VI, VE, and VO, as well as VU (ヴ), WI, and WE, are no more in use in Japanese (both hiragana and katakana). I believe they were dropped at the reform performed right after the World War II. Until that time katakana was used which every letters we now use hiragana for. -- Duckie

Actually, the "U+small vowel kana" spelling for WI and WE (ウィ, ウェ), the "U with handakuten" spelling of VU　(ヴ), and the "U with handakuten + small vowel kana" spelling for VA, VI, VE, and VO (ヴァ, ヴィ, ヴェ, ヴォ) are modern additions, used for foreign words. They shouldn't be confused with the stand-alone WI (ヰ) and WE (ヱ) kana, which are archaic. — Gwalla | Talk 22:11, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

FYI Re: About ヴ Japman 09:17, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

uses of katakana

Beginning at some point in the mists of Japanese history, and lasting until some point in the 20th century (1945?--I'm not sure) katakana was used almost everywhere that hiragana is now--for okurigana, etc. I'm not sure about the history. Anyone have more specific information on this? I'd like to update this article to mention that.

I want to say that this began in the Meiji era and ended during the Allied occupation. It seems to be associated with the Imperial rule... all the laws, edicts, and the like from 1868 - 1945 are written in kanji and katakana, but traditional literature was written in kanji and/or hiragana. - Sekicho 19:55, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

Imperial edicts are AFAIK still written in katakana... or at least the certificate of the Order of the Chrysanthemum (c. 1970-something) hanging on my dad's wall is. Jpatokal 11:50, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I concur with Sekicho. But I wonder why they did that. Is that because writing katakana is more efficient then hiragana? -- Taku 00:20, Aug 31, 2004 (UTC)

Question about katakana on another page

Hello. Are all of the katakana in the last section of this page currently in use? I'm trying to compile a complete chart of kana and since they're not mentioned here, I was curious. Thanks!

There's some weird stuff on the page you reference (the "twa" and "kwa" lines, which I've never seen before, the "dexi" romanization for でぃ, which shows how to type the litte-e but is meaningless beyond that). I'd like to see some sightings of that stuff in the wild. BTW, you can sign your posts by typing for tildes in a row, like this (but without the spaces) ~ ~ ~ ~.adamrice 02:12, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

They repeated the main chart a lot. The only new ones they have is kw (qw is a bad romanization) and tw — and they're really only used to note silence in pronunciation, not actually form new words (e.g. クィーン [kwiin] instead of クイーン [kuiin]]). This can be done on all, so it's redundant listing these — and you should probably refer to wiki's chart, as they missed a few. --Blade Hirato 02:55, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, folks. One more, if you don't mind: What the heck are "dexyu" and "uxo" and the others? I tried a Google search and got almost nothing. I strongly suspect they're something nonstandard, but I've been wondering that for a while. Domo! -- J44xm 02:41, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

I have no idea! Fg2 03:33, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Dexyu is デュ, pronounced dyu. Uxo is ウォ, wo (large u, small o, used because the kana "wo" is pronounced "o.") Sekicho 03:47, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Sekicho, thanks for that information. Do you know where that romanization comes from? And whether it's actually in widespread use? I know the pronunciation, but I've never seen the letters "dexyu" before. I cannot imagine any speaker of English or any western European language saying dyu when they read the letters dexyu so I wonder who devised it. Fg2 03:53, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

That's how it would be typed into an input method editor. Since there's no "x" in Japanese, IME's interpret "x" to mean "make the next kana small." That's not how a sane person would romanize it. Sekicho

Now it makes sense! Thanks Fg2 06:01, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Additions needed

Right, I've made a couple of minor alterations, includinding mentioning uses of katakana in furigana. I was tempted to add examples X (エックス) or 逆説 (パラドクス) and such, but really those belong on the furigana page... which is such a *lovely* big block of text, I have no idea where to put them.

Also, the uses section mentions 'Names of animal and plant species', but not other technical fields where you'd often see loanwords... the elements come to mind, ネオン and such.

In giving the table it's own heading, I realised what the page realy needs though is an equivalent of the Hiragana writing system section. Transcribing English to Japanese covers that direction quite well (though needs finishing), but nothing on this page really gives an idea what english (and to a lesser extent other languages) word you'd expect a katakana borrowing to be. As the table lists 'vi' as ヴィ it would be rather a surprise to find that it's generally rendered as ビ for japanese speakers. -- Martin 20:17, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Possible external link?

Hi. I have a site with a Flash katakana writing tutor:

http://www.japanese-name-translation.com/site/write_katakana.html

Would this be a useful external link for this page? (I am new to editing Wikipedia, so I thought I should run it by you guys and see what you thought.) If you think it is good, would someone add it?

Accessibility

Hooray for colourblindness, or something. I suppose this is a broader issue than just this article, but how about denoting obsolete characters with ^† rather than colour. The same goes for table columns being green and yellow. Colour shouldn't be used to convey information other than information about colour, or aesthetics. My two cents. See http://www.webaim.org/techniques/visual/colorblind

- Seconded. The green is hard to differentiate from the black, and I have good vision (if not a great monitor) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.235.238.164 (talk) 01:35, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Chinese Words

In the introductory section, it says it is used for transcription of non-chinese words. I believe that is incorrect, since the on reading of kanji is often written with katakana. Please correct me if I am wrong. --Weyoun6 20:39, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You are right that by convention, kunyomi are written in hiragana and onyomi in katakana. But the article has the general spirit of katakana's usage correct. It would be misleading and hypercorrect to mention right at the top that katakana is used to represent Chinese-derived words, when in fact it is only used that way in dictionaries, a relatively trivial fact about katakana. I say let it stand. adamrice 16:17, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Why not just have an aside that says "Katakana may be used for pronuciation of the onyoumi of kanji in dictionaries"? --Weyoun6 00:36, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also "non-Chinese foreign languages" is misleading, loans from *modern* chinese may bewritten in katakana, just not historical borrowings. --zippedmartin 05:32, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Remark on viewing katakana

What does the parenthetical remark "otherwise visit the page for hiragana" at the top of the section Hepburn romanization of katakana refer to? As far as I can see, the hiragana article also requires Japanese fonts to be installed. -- Jitse Niesen 18:14, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Don't understand "computer" modification

The most recent modification says that katakana are used to write technical terms etc. but surely this is already covered by the use for gairaigo? Does it mean that katakana are used for tech. terms where the word could be written in kanji? That is news to me. Otherwise, this entry is pointless and should be blasted. Unless anyone enlightens me otherwise, I'll remove the entry completely. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.220.243.72 (talk • contribs) on 09:06, 1 August 2005.

I agree, though I know almost no Japanese, so I've reverted that edit. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:13, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Katakana for the Ainu language

Apparently there was an unexplained extra row added to Ainu katakana table. It had corresponding halfwidth katakana instead of small katakana letters. It was probably added for systems that do not support the display of Ainu katakana letters, such as systems that use fonts that were designed for EUC-JP or Shift-JIS encoded text, which do not include Ainu katakana letters like Unicode does. I was originally thinking of adding an explanation and replacing the halfwidth row with something like this:

31F

ク

シ

ス

ト

ヌ

ハ

ヒ

フ

ヘ

ホ

ム

ラ

リ

ル

レ

ロ

However I realized that the Unicode chart PDF link should suffice already, so I simply removed it. —Tokek 04:51, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

More confusion with Katakana

Right, I found out the uses of small KA and KE, but what is small WA used for? (ヮ) About the characters WI and WE, were they used before they became obsoleted? =\

EDIT: When I looked up the Katakana transcription for Quentin, what does THIS transliterate as? クェ Kue?

--Datavi X 20:56, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

tyu, dyu, and fyu

Is there any reason why tyu, dyu, and fyu don't have the same background cell colour of the characters above them (i.e., beige instead of green)? Just wondering if that colour indicates some kind of grouping that isn't clear in the table.

That would be because I forgot to change their background color when I moved them under the yōon category. Fixed. Matuszek 04:06, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Installing Japanese fonts

For what it's worth I couldn't see the Japanese characters on this page at first; I had to download a special language pack. The Japanese language pack for Windows XP can be downloaded here. --Cyde Weys 2M-VOTE 03:32, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

The subtle differences in characters.

Could someone please explain the differences between ソ and ン along with シ and ツ? Those four characters give me fits by being so frustratingly similar, and I've never seen anything even mention for a way to tell them apart. I'm assuming it partly has to do with the stroke direction, but that hardly seems to matter with some of the more facy fonts that get used which don't have any variation in thickness. Perhaps mention it in the article? Also, additional tips would be helpful.

On a similar note, what about differences between similar katakana and kanji (e.g. ロ and 口) or between kantana and hiragana (e.g.り and リ)? That's a more minor issue though, as they are usually easier to tell apart and surrounding contexts give better clues. But still, some fonts and handwritting styles make them nigh impossible see a difference. --SeizureDog 23:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

One of difference of these katakana's(ソ/ン,ツ/シ) is direction of strokes. Last stroke of ソ and ツ are drawn from upper right to lower left. ン and シ, lower left to upper right. In addition, angles of first stroke of ソ/ツ and ン/シ are different. (first strokes of ン/シ are more horizontal). And more, ツ is drawn left to right, シ is drawn upper to lower, just same as hiragana form of each characters(つ and し). Even Japanese sometimes confuse these characters, especially, in handwriting.

ロ and 口 are almost same as well as エ(katakana) and 工(kanji), ニ(katakana) and 二(kanji), へ(hiragana) and ヘ(katakana). り(hiragana) often (but not always) has upward brushstroke at end of first stroke and リ(katakana) usually has not.

This is very serious problem for developers of Japanese OCR system or something like that. Canadie 04:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Canadie is pretty much spot on, but I just wanted to add a point about alignment from the perspective of how the characters are mapped. If you think of each character as existing in a square, then the beginning of the strokes for ン and シ are all pretty much on a vertical line parallel to the left boundary of the imaginary square. Similarly, the inception of the strokes for ソ and ツ are along a horizontal line parallel to the top boundary. This is generally how calligraphy teachers describe it, so as to make the differentiation clear. But Canadie is write, sometimes in handwriting you can only tell by context.

katakana for 'ryi', 'nyi', etc.?

The article Tales of Legendia and the Japanese Wikipedia version [3] have シャーリィ (on the English page romanized as Shāryi) as the transliteration of the name Shirley. Has anyone seen this use of the small ィ katakana, as analagous to the yōon constructions before? Or is this just an alternate way to write シャーリー, and thus properly romanized as Shārī? (As far as I know, the sound 'yi' isn't found in Japanese, as it has no hiragana or katakana, so it would be odd if it existed only in yōon-type forms.) I also found an article on Kevin Kurányi (ケビン・クラニィ, but redirects to ケビン・クラニー), [4]. The fact that this redirects to nī as seems to suggest that リィ, ニィ don't read as ryi, nyi, etc. but are just non-standard alternates to using ー and romanize to rī, nī; but if anyone knows the answer for sure, I'd be interested in hearing it. Thanks. Speight 06:20, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

What? I highly doubt such kana exists for "ryi" "nyi" "kyi" etc. They're even difficult for me to pronounce. --FlareNUKE 08:58, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

In Nihongo no Hyōki 日本語の表記 by TAKEBE Yoshiaki 武部良明 there are no such usage. Officialy they should be written as シャーリイ or シャーリー。Romanizations for both are Shārii. (Long 'i' is written as 'ii'.) Some people use this for last letter 'y'.--RedDragon 15:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to ask around and find out what the intention in popular usage is with ostensibly redundant combinations such as "デェ" and "フゥ". I've gotten two general answers. 1) I've heard "デェ" is more aesthetically pleasing than "デー". 2) I've heard "デェ" is pronounced (in length) somewhere between "デ" and "デー".--68.143.188.113 (talk) 21:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Coffee

The word "coffee" is listed as being originally katakana (コーヒー) and alternatively written as 珈琲. Technically, there's a bit more behind it - the word "珈琲" is actually derived from the Mandarin word 咖啡 (purely phonetic characters, pronounced "ka fei") where each character has the left 口 replaced with 王 for some reason. Exactly why the characters changed, I don't know. --Quietust 20:13, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Why not Hepburn?

My edit of Kompyūta was reverted to Konpyūta. Did'nt you use Hepburn system in en.wiki?--RedDragon 15:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Depends on what variant of Hepburn transcription is used. Konpyūta is revised Hepburn, which, according to the Wikipedia page about Hepburn romanisation, is the most common variant. 213.10.112.111 21:47, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Where did you define revised Hepburn? The Ministry of Foreign Affairs defines Hepburn style [[5]]. In this style "n" is replaced by "m" before "m", "p", and "b". And station names of JR are like Shimbashi not Shinbashi according to Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport requires. We think "Shinbashi" is in Kunrei-shiki. Only road signs use "Shinbashi".--RedDragon 04:42, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

"Shinbashi" is definitely not Kunreishiki. In Kunrei it would be "Sinbasi". --Allgaeuer (talk) 23:04, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Beikoku

Hello. Isn't it slightly wrong to say "beikoku" means "A country of America". Doesn't it literally mean "rice country", albeit that 米　has come to also mean America. Fillanfloppy 18:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I think its referring to the other complex kanji. "THROUGH FIRE, JUSTICE IS SERVED!" 02:56, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Chart characters transposed

In the chart next to the Computer Encoding section characters are transposed. Characters for 'fu' + 'he' and 'ru' + 're' are in the wrong columns. --Jobble 20:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I noticed that too! I've GIMPed the characters around so they sit in the right columns. Sicherman 02:51, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

The chart in the History section is wrong again. CapnPrep 10:46, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. 'ru' and 're' (ル and レ respectively) are in the correct places. Only 'fu' and 'he' (フ and ヘ respectively) are in the wrong places. And yet, judging from http://www.biocrawler.com/encyclopedia/Katakana (which seems to be an older version of this wikipedia article, the historical man'yōgana equivalents are in the proper cells, and only the katakana are in the wrong spot. I hope this isn't some insidious misinformation plot. My theory is that there was an attempt to replace a plain image with an SVG equivalent, and something went wrong in the process. At any rate, this is confusing and I'm not aware of any reason for them to be out of order, and nobody has commented on this thread with an explanation... So I'm going to try my hand at fixing it. JMCorey 17:19, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, fixed. JMCorey 18:02, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

missing something?

Fullwidth go from U+30A0 to U+30FF. (total: 96 characters) Halfwidth go from U+FF65 to U+FF9F. (total: 59 characters)

Even allowing for the U+31F0–U+31FF extension (16 characters of unspecified width), the numbers don't match up. What is going on? Why are there more fullwidth than halfwidth, and how wide is the extension? What about the circled ones?

24.110.145.57 19:30, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

In Halfwidth, there are no combination characters with the diacritics (eg, to make ガ (30AC) you need to have two characters FF76 and FF9E) Neier 21:41, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

"ji" and "zu" in the "d" consonant section

Well, in the "D" consonant section, there would be "dji" as in "padjii" based on "pudgy", and "dzu" as in "badzu" based on the plural, "buds" if for a title name. --PJ Pete

I'm not sure what the problem here is. "There would be" when? Both of these kana belong in the d-column (since they are voiced versions of t-column kana), but neither is romanized with a "d" in any recognized romāji scheme. — Gwalla | Talk 15:30, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, they're in the "d" section when ordered alphabetically, though its pronunciaton is ji, zu. And there is a rōmaji (not romāji) scheme that writes di and du: Nihon-shiki. Not sure if it is used, anyways.

—Nethac DIU, would never stop to talk here—
23:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

In following Hepburn convention, the term diesel, to mean the diesel engine, becomes jīzeru in Romaji. And likewise, tiller would be written as chīrā, correct? WikiPro1981X (talk) 15:28, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

No. It would be "tirā"/ティラー. See this. As for "diesel"/ディーゼル, it would be "dīzeru". Oda Mari (talk) 15:48, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Right-to-left katakana

I bought a box of Sakuma Drops in Japan in June. The tin that I bought even has a picture of Setsuko from Grave of the Fireflies peering into a tin. (Memories of that film meant that I took several minutes to compose myself before I could buy it.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakuma_drops

Notice that the katakana is written backwards. Not mirror-reversed, but right-to-left. I have also seen old posters and beer labels in this order. Example: ルービ "Biiru" Yebisu beer labels from 1890 to 1933. (That date range is just taken from the examples, not an attempt to constrain the impact.) Reference ”ビールのラベル” "Beer Labels" from Sapporo Breweries.

It might just be an artefact of the right-to-left order of kana at that time. Trivial, but will save someone else a lot of confusion when trying to work out what "Makusa Supurrodo" might be.

I haven't edited the article: where would it fit in?--In no sense nonsense 06:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

This is explained at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_and_vertical_writing_in_East_Asian_scripts#Right-to-left_horizontal_writing , which is linked to from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system#Direction_of_writing . Not sure if the katakana article has a good place you could put that link. 130.89.228.82 16:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

hm

1. Why is it "エヌ" instead of "エン"?
2. Why is it "メール" instead of "メイル"?

Ya, yu, yo in the table

Why are the katakana ya, yu, yo shown in a separate row under a, u, o instead of at the top of their own columns on the right? —Largo Plazo 23:46, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Additional Forms

For each individual katakana's article, there are addtional forms listed in a table. These additional katakana should be included in the table.68.148.164.166 (talk) 08:36, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Freeze on nations and cities

Is it time to put a freeze on the list of nations and cities? I figure the value of the table in the context of the article is to give a flavor for how names from different languages are dealt with in Japanese, not to provide a comprehensive worldwide list. —Largo Plazo (talk) 12:12, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you. Oda Mari (talk) 15:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Additional thought: it would be reasonable to add a country or two from Africa and Oceania, and maybe another one or two from Latin America, since the list is currently skewed to the Northern Hemisphere. But at this point I think no further additions for North America, Europe, or Asia are warranted. —Largo Plazo (talk) 16:33, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

That sounds nice. Instead, how about remove some? Names not so different from en pronunciation like Brasil, Finland, Mexico, Philippines, Singapore, Belfast, Hong Kong, New York, Seattle, and Toronto. Oda Mari (talk) 15:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I have some comments on the katakana name tables.

"Chunanbei" is "Central and South America" which is not really the same as "Latin America", right? "Rabei" (ラ米) is an abbreviation of ラテンアメリカ.

As for katakana country names, I think the following changes should be made.

"Doitsu" came from Duits in Dutch, rather than Deutschland.
"Cheko" came from Czechoslovakia, rather than Česko.
"Indo" came from 印度 in Chinese, which in turn came from the Indus River.

My suggestions:

Include some non-Western (Indian, Arabic, etc.) personal names?
Add Côte d'Ivoire (ja:コートジボワール), an African country. ("Ivory Coast" is uncommon in Japan.)
Add a country from the Middle East, such as Turkey, or "Toruko" ja:トルコ in Japanese.
Add Australia or New Zealand from Oceania.
Remove three nations of Europe. Finland, Lithuania, and Romania?
Keep the Philippines because フィリピン lacks the final "s" of the source name.
Replace Belfast with an important African city. Cairo? Dakar? Johanesburg ("Yohanesuburugu" ja:ヨハネスブルグ)?

Shinkansen Fan (talk) 15:15, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I mostly agree with you. As for Latin America, there's no word ラ米 in Japanese. These are dic. entries of Latin America. [6] and [7]. We don't use Latin America/ラテン・アメリカ much, usually use 北米/North America, 中米/Central America, and 南米/South America. Meaning that we think these countries geographically. Most people could not tell which countries are Latin and which are not. Oda Mari (talk) 15:58, 15 May 2009 (UTC)　

ラ米 does exist, although it's not commonly used. We even have an article ja:ラ米・カリブ首脳会議 The word "Latin America" is somewhat ambiguous and should be replaced with "Central and South America" for 中南米, which I think is more neutral than "Latin America" Shinkansen Fan (talk) 13:19, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for my ignorance. But the word is not commonly used at all. Maybe it's in some new-word dictionary, but not in general Japanese dictionaries. It is interesting that the second one of reference pages on ja article describes it as "中南米・カリブ海諸国首脳会議". Why don't you edit the article? It is OK to me, including your suggestions on country names. Your suggestions are reasonable. Do you have any on city names? Oda Mari (talk) 14:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Hakka Kana?

Does anyone have any materials about Hakka Kana? I googled it but didn't find anything. Please, I really want to know the Hakka Kana. I've already seen Hakka Bopomofo, but never the Hakka Kana. If someone gave me a link to some material or made an article on Hakka Kana, I would appreciate it greatly. --78.88.163.38 (talk) 09:40, 29 June 2008 (UTC) (Don't ask me for registering, I will never do it).

its called Taiwanese kana kUCEEZ 20:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Some of the supplemental items in the table

Are all the phonetics given in the lower half of the table genuine? For example, there's ティ ti. I know that ティ is used to transcribe [ti] where it appears in foreign words, but is it pronounced [ti] in Japanese, or it is pronounced [tei]? —Largo Plazo (talk) 12:44, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

It is pronounced [ti] in Japanese. Oda Mari (talk) 14:14, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, a note on the "extra" kana are given in another article: "Most of these are not formally standardized.^{[citation needed]}" [8]. However, whether or not they have been "standardized", ティ is widely used[9]. In modern usage, it is pronounced as [ti] only. —Tokek (talk) 0

Tokushuon Katakana Listing

The Tokushuon Chart is incomplete and may have errors.

スィ & ズィ should be pronounced SWI and ZWI respectively. Example: スィッチ = switch.　citation Doing some more research, I have found some evidence that contradicts my above statement... Is there any way we can get a citation from an actual text that can confirm these characters actual sounds? I spoke to my Japanese professor on campus, スィ & ズィ ARE used for "si" and "zi". However, Japanese native speakers will pronounce them as shi an ji contrary to what the actual pronunciation is. These 2 sounds gives them problems I think, so they are pretty much omitted from most textbooks.neoprofit (talk) 19:36, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

The ウ column creates glides for some of the other syllables in the standard katakana syllabary that are identical to the way that クァ,クィ,クェ,クォ(kwa,kwi,kwe,kwo) are formed. ク, グ, ス, & ズ are the only common examples of the *w* form.　Examples: スェット = sweat citation Note "wu" does not exist.　Feel free to look at the rest of the "u" row.

Many other glides are available. ェ added to the イ column syllable creates a *ye sound for most of the standard katakana syllabary. キェギェニェヒェビェピェミェリェ. Most of them are used just for names, very limited.

Glides for テ, デ, & フ need to be completed. ャ and ョ are both available and used.

ホゥ(hu) needs a citation or it should be removed. This is not a sound or a character combination in Japanese.

Neoprofit (talk) 21:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Strange combinations

Some of the small-kana compounds seem dubious to me, especially fya/fyu/fyo and wya/wyu/wyo. Are these ever used? Any citations? — Gwalla | Talk 18:34, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

wya/wyu/wyo are dubious. But not fya/fyu/fyo. See fya, fyu, and fyo. Oda Mari (talk) 06:24, 7 October 2008 (UTC)　

Well, you learn something new every day! Thank you. — Gwalla | Talk 16:39, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

wya/wyu/wyo do not exist. I HAVE seen them written to emulate sounds, onomatopoeia. fya/fyu/fyo most definitely exist though. fyu I think is the only one that is really used with any significance　[10]　neoprofit (talk) 19:44, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Revisiting the origin of some country names

Some of the attributions of country names in Japanese are clear enough to me. For example, "Poland" is, as far as I know, "Poland" only in English (Polish "Polska", Portuguese "Polónia", Dutch "Polen", etc.), so I have no argument with "pōrando" being attributed to English. I also agree with "oranda" from Portuguese "Holanda" because the Dutch name is "Nederland" and, besides that, the Dutch provincial name "Holland", as well as the country's English name, would go into Japanese as "orando" under the usual convention, as manifested by "finrando" and "airurando".

But would "cheko" really come from Czech "Česko"? I would expect "chesuko". How about "indo" from English "India": why wouldn't that have become "indeia" or "injia"? —Largo Plazo (talk) 14:11, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

As for the Dutch provincial name "Holland", it is Horanto in Japanese. I am not sure if Cheko really comes from Czech. But the country is called Cheko in Japan. As for Indo, I have no idea why it has not become "indeia" or "injia". Indo might come from Chinese 印度's Japanese pronunciation or the first part of French Indochine. Oda Mari (talk) 16:53, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I think Cheko came from English Czechoslovakia. Slovakia is now independent, so the country name has been split into Czecho and Slovakia in Japanese. Historically, India has been called Tenjiku in Japan. The Japanese article of Tenjiku (ja:天竺) says that Indo came from the Indus River. Shinkansen Fan (talk) 14:53, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Parent systems

Please see Talk:Japanese_writing_system#Parent_systems for edits to the development tree.79.192.231.198 (talk) 14:02, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

ー

The Choonpu is used liberally on this page but never introduced, explained or linked to. I'm not an expert, I don't know whether it should be somewhere in the table or a paragraph in the text. But I do think it should at least be mentioned when it is part of the writing system and -- as mentioned -- appears quite often in the article. 82.135.0.71 (talk) 23:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

イッヒ

In a Japanese book teaching German, the word "ich" was written as イッヒ. I asked my Japanese friend how to pronounce this and he pronounced it very closely to the German "ch". It makes me wonder whether the German version of Michael would actually be transliterated into katakana as "ミッハエル" or "ミッヒャエル". Any thoughts?121.216.136.18 (talk) 07:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

"ja:ミヒャエル" is the best transliteration of Michael, although "ミハエル" is also used. This article mentions Michael Ende, Michael Schumacher, Michael Ballack, and Michael Wittmann. You could add "ッ" but it's usually omitted. "Ich liebe dich" would be "イッヒリーベディッヒ". Shinkansen Fan (talk) 14:08, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Small ka, small ke

Should the row appended to the table in this edit with small ka and small ke be there? These aren't additional katakana, they are small, special-purpose versions of kana that are already in the table. As an IP user just noted, the small ke is just ke being used as an abbreviation for 箇, and it isn't even pronounced ke.

I don't know what small ka is. The article doesn't say, and at the moment it's erroneously linked to the small ke article. There isn't a small ka article. —Largo Plazo (talk) 11:08, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Small ka ja:ヵ should have its own article. It is used in a word like ikkasho "one place" (一ヵ所 or 一ヶ所). small ke is pronounced "ka", "ga" or "ko" but small ka is always "ka" and cannot be used in place names like Sekigahara (関ヶ原) and Kasumigaseki（霞ヶ関）.Shinkansen Fan (talk) 15:39, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

As systematic as it gets

Katakana with Yōon, modern additions andobsolete characters
ア a	イ i	ャ ya	ュ yu	ェ e	ョyo	ウ u	ャ ya	ァ a ヮ wa	ィ i	ュyu	ゥ u	ェ e	ョ yo	ォ o	エ e	ャ ya	ィ i	ュyu	ョ yo	オ o	ゥ u	C
カ ka ヵ	キ ki	キャ kya	キュ kyu		キョ kyo	ク ku		クァ kwa クヮ	クィ kwi		クゥ kwu	クェ kwe		クォ kwo	ケ ke ヶ					コ ko
ガ ga	ギ gi	ギャ gya	ギュ gyu		ギョ gyo	グ gu		グァ gwa グヮ	グィ gwi		グゥ gwu	グェ gwe		グォ gwo	ゲ ge					ゴ go
サ sa	シ shi	シャ sha	シュ shu	シェ she	ショ sho	ス su	スャ sya	スァswa	スィ swi	スュ syu		スェ swe	スョ syo	スォswo	セ se					ソ so
ザ za	ジ ji	ジャ ja	ジュ ju	ジェ je	ジョ jo	ズ zu	ズャ zya		ズィzi	ズュ zyu			ズョ zyo		ゼ ze					ゾ zo
タ ta	チ chi	チャ cha	チュ chu	チェ che	チョ cho	ツ tsu		ツァ tsa	ツィ tsi			ツェ tse		ツォ tso	テ te	テャ tya	ティti	テュ tyu	テョtyo	ト to	トゥ tu
ダ da	ヂ ji	ヂャ ja	ヂュ ju		ヂョ jo	ヅ dzu									デ de	デャ dya	ディdi	デュ dyu	デョdyo	ド do	ドゥ du
ナ na	ニ ni	ニャ nya	ニュ nyu		ニョ nyo	ヌ nu									ネ ne					ノ no		ン n
ハ ha	ヒ hi	ヒャ hya	ヒュ hyu		ヒョ hyo	フ fu	フャ fya	ファfa	フィ fi	フュ fyu		フェ fe	フョ fyo	フォfo	ヘ he					ホ ho	ホゥ hu
バ ba	ビ bi	ビャ bya	ビュ byu		ビョ byo	ブ bu									ベ be					ボ bo
パ pa	ピ pi	ピャ pya	ピュ pyu		ピョ pyo	プ pu									ペ pe					ポ po
マ ma	ミ mi	ミャ mya	ミュ myu		ミョ myo	ム mu									メ me					モ mo
ヤ ya	yi					ユ yu						ユェye			ye					ヨ yo
ラ ra	リ ri	リャ rya	リュ ryu	リェ rye	リョ ryo	ル ru									レ re					ロ ro
ワ wa	ヰ wi	ヰャ wya	ヰュ wyu		ヰョwyo	wu									ヱ we					ヲ wo
ヷ va	ヸ vi														ヹ ve					ヺ vo
ア a	イ i			イェ ye		ウ u	ウャ wya	ウァwa	ウィ wi	ウュ wyu		ウェ we	ウョ wyo	ウォwo	エ e					オ o
						ヴ vu	ヴャ vya	ヴァva	ヴィ vi	ヴュ vyu		ヴェ ve	ヴョ vyo	ヴォvo

It is too wide, sadly, and not compatible with traditions. — Christoph Päper 20:43, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Latin alphabet

Balgariya and Rossiya: are they Romanizations rather than Romanji? (Romanizations are where originally (in these cases), they were Cyrillic and then Latinized (or romanized).174.3.103.39 (talk) 03:34, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I would like to answer your question, but I don't understand it. The Japanese names for Bulgaria and Russia are Burugaria (ブルガリア)　and Roshia (ロシア). Rossiya is a romanization of the Russian word for Russia, and I don't know what "Balgariya" is. Tell me if any of that helps. (Ejoty (talk) 15:13, 15 September 2009 (UTC))

Examples

If you look in Article History, many examples have been removed. Do we really need even a table of examples?174.3.103.39 (talk) 04:26, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I removed the "other uses" columns as it was only used in one example and was causing vertical scrollbars to appear on my browser as well as making the table hard to read.

Personally I think it needs to be trimmed down considerably, or at least simplified, as it is indeed too large. 78.133.73.231 (talk) 17:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Table-style hiragana

Please discuss with us at Hiragana#Table_and_wording as both tables should look the same here and there. Thanks whatever your view is 79.192.239.79 (talk) 00:49, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Found unused image on Commons

w:File:Table katakana.svg 好しか？:P -- 李博杰 | —Talk contribs email 07:00, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I copied the Hiragana#How to write hiragana to this article and replaced the image with the one that you've found. Shinkansen Fan (talk) 17:19, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Weird Katakana combinations. Actually used?

I saw the english word "Bloody" in katakana (handwritting) as ブSMALLラッデイー (Braddii). Is small RA common or it was just made-up by the writer? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.228.250.145 (talk • contribs)

That's probably just creative (or sloppy) handwriting. Unicode only has a small ラ for Ainu; it's not included in standard Japanese fonts. --Speight (talk) 06:23, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

ヰェ as yi removed

ヰェ was listed in the table as an obsolete/uncommon form of イィ(yi); this seems rather odd as it is composed of characters normally pronounced "wi" and "e" respectively. All the other forms in the table seem more logical than this; following a similar pattern, I'd expect ヰェ to be pronounced "wye" if anything. I could imagine, say, ユィ being an alternate form for yi (and a Google search seems consistent with it being used for this, at least to some extent). I'm not fluent in Japanese, though, so I don't feel confident adding that to the table.

(But I'm pretty sure that ヰェ is bogus. The only Google hits for ヰェ on the first page that is not mojibake or a mirror of this page hint that ヰェ could be a rare/obsolete form of "wye", though that sounds awfully hard to pronounce. Definitely not enough support to include without a citation.)

Is there a reason why the table is largely lacking citations for the rarer forms in general? The common ones found in every textbook probably don't need cites, but it would be good to have a way to verify the less common constructions. --Speight (talk) 06:17, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Stroke order

The diagram in the How to write katakana section has 3 mistakes. The ツ (tsu), メ (me) and ヲ (wo) are listed with the incorrect stroke order. Owencunn (talk) 04:32, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

You are right. Thank you for pointing that out. Oda Mari (talk) 06:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I changed the SVG source of the image, which was pretty easy, because for me メ and tu ツ only ‘1’ and ‘2’ had to change places and wo ヲ got a ‘3’ attached to an existing arrow. It’s hardly more complicated than changing Wikipedia source text.

Are you sure, though, about wo? I find it strange that the apparent same base form フ is written with one stroke only in fu フ, ra ラ, wa ワ, u ウ, su ス, nu ヌ, ku ク and ta タ. — Christoph Päper 10:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the change. I'm absolutely sure about "wo". The original kanji was 乎 and its first three strokes became ヲ. Think it is similar to テ (天), only the position of the third stroke is different. Oda Mari (talk) 14:55, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Wu

Would it be appropriate to use the existing kanji 于 ([11]) for 'wu' instead of the image? Or should we wait until it gets its own Unicode code point (like other extremely similar but different characters, such as へ and ヘ)? - MK (^t/_c) 23:33, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be. Be bold and edit! Oda Mari (talk) 04:50, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

That was reverted quickly XD - MK (^t/_c) 09:15, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Ask the editor who reverted your edit. I'm afraid I cannot tell the difference between two characters. Oda Mari (talk) 15:20, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

There's no visual difference between the characters right now; the person who proposed it back then used the original kanji for it. This was in the earlier days of katakana; the 于 kanji was used for /wu/ and the 井 kanji was used for /wi/. Eventually 井 become stylized as ヰ, but since 于 never caught on it never had time to be adapted and made distinct. The editor who reverted it made the correct observation that if 于 is added to unicode as a katakana, it would have its own code point and would possibly be styled differently. - MK (^t/_c) 21:48, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

ヂャ, ヂュ, ヂョ

Why aren't these in the current table?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 01:51, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

? They are. Please take a good look at the table in the "D" section of Digraphs with diacritics (yōon with (han)dakuten). Oda Mari (talk) 06:26, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I just added them tonight.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:01, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh! I didn't checked the history. Thank you. Happy editing! Oda Mari (talk) 17:32, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

What on earth is ĩ?

In the segment of the katakana table showing the various sounds of ン(n), one of the IPA symbols listed is ĩ. I can not find this symbol anywhere in the IPA, nor anywhere else, except some obscure references to native american languages. Is this a misprint? Also, just to mention, the article on the kana ン also lists ĩ as one of the sounds, it seems that one was copied from the other. Avialexander (talk) 18:31, 8 August 2010 (UTC)avialexander

You won't find ĩ on an IPA chart because it is a character with a diacritic -- there are far too many possibilities for charts to list every character + diacritic combination possible. Look up the symbol and diacritic separately and you'll find out what it means. 91.105.63.39 (talk) 18:59, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Katakana "is" or katakana "are"?

Although I just fixed one example, I've now noticed other inconsistencies in respect of whether "katakana" is treated as a singular noun (meaning the script) or a plural noun (meaning the characters). While I guess you could make an argument that both interpretations are possible, I personally find it dicsconcerting to be chopping and changing. If no one has any objections I propose to change to singular noun throughout. 86.161.83.77 (talk) 01:22, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

The Japanese language does not have plural words. "Katakana" refers to the script as a whole as well as the characters.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:50, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Inventory section

I do not see the use of the "Inventory" section. It appears to be a superfluous summarization of the larger table of katakana along with prose that could go elsewhere in the article. I don't understand why it was originally added ("The main table has become a guide to the Japanese writing system and to the transcription of foreign words in Japanese, so I believe a separate table is needed"). Just because the larger table features a large amount of diglyphs does not mean that we need a separate table just to summarize the main katakana.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:01, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

The edit summary you quote just about says it. The large table contains a lot of stuff that is not about katakana itself, but about katakana as used in the contemporary Japanese writing system. Of course that’s its main use, but it makes sense to introduce it without all that baggage.

I actually believe it would make even more sense to deal with most of the table, as appropriate, in Japanese writing system, Yōon, Kana and Transcription into kana / Japanese or the like and trim this article (and Hiragana) down to the bare essentials. But since I currently have neither the time to argue about this or make that major change to several articles, I will abstain from it for now. — Christoph Päper 23:43, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Please do not restore the "Inventory" section, again. It is redundant to the larger table which includes all of the information. In addition, none of that section is sourced. It is not necessary to have an additional summary of the katakana system. And anyway, ン is not one of the N-family kana. That is why it is placed all the way at the end of every other table of kana and not included with the Na-Ni-Nu-Ne-No group. So on top of this section being overly redundant, it is also factually incorrect. If anything, this article could use an expansion to its lede akin to what is at hiragana. Not an overly wordy summary and additional table.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:14, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Like I said before, the large table is not helpful for someone who wants to quickly read up on the basics of katakana. (It instead serves as a transcription guide.) Therefore I have, again, added a basic table to the first section that is now labeled “writing system” (which is really an inappropriate term here) and was basically copied from hiragana.

I moved N to the first row, together with the vowels, because it takes positions much like them. There are varying traditions where to place it, of course, among them in an additional row in the u column, since it came from a mu man’yōgana. — Christoph Päper 18:21, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, ン doesn't belong in any row, actually. And the "writing system" section is a duplicate of the same section at Hiragana. It serves to explain the kana and basic usage better than your "inventory" section ever did.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:08, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

And upon further debate, the smaller table does nothing but take up space. Wikipedia is not a quick information guide. It is a fully fleshed out encyclopdia. If people want to learn the basics, there are other sources out there. The larger table is not just a transcription guide. It lists all the main katakana glyphs and points out what they are actually called rather than having a grid with only a consonant and a vowel guiding people to guess what they are supposed to be (which doesn't at all help for シ, チ, ツ, and フ) and your table has no adequate way of dealing with the ン.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 07:40, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

The table serves no useful purpose. Stop putting it back Crissov.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:02, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The section “Writing System” starts with talking about how the inventory is composed, yet you want the first-time reader (and everyone else) to scroll down (or turn pages) to see a large table that includes much more than this basic information? A small table next to the text is much more helpful and certainly doesn’t increase the size of this article by an inappropriate amount.

You are right, “the larger table is not just a transcription guide”, but it is one and that is excess information for many readers.

The table of basic (kata)kana appears twice later in the article, when history and stroke order are explained. Different layouts are used, though, and the position of N there within the -a row/column is all but optimal, but harder to change, since images are being used. — Christoph Päper 09:23, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a quick reference guide. It is an encyclopedia. Adding this table does not improve the page. That is why it was never there to begin with on either this page or the Hiragana page. The larger much more fleshed out table with information regarding the names of the glyphs as well as their pronunciations is much more useful than a table of match consonants with vowels to figure out the names.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 09:51, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

One of the most common things any encyclopedia is used for, is “a quick reference guide”. Actually, that is pretty much its definition (maybe not emphasizing quick).

If I wanted to know how one of the major contemporary applications of katakana, namely the transcription of foreign terms, is done I would expect (among other things) a table like the large one in this article – I would look for this either in a section of this article or a separate article called Transcription into Japanese or the like. If I just wanted to know what katakana is and how it looks like, I do not need all that excess information, and I would expect the overview at the top of the katakana article. Furthermore pronunciations differ diachronically and geographically and therefore play a minor role in articles on scripts and writing systems if they are not specifically targeted at a narrow area in time and space.

Since so far you are the only one objecting, after the section including the smaller table had been there for months, and you are proposing to remove content rather than adding it, I believe it’s your duty to provide a really good explanation why this should be so. The equivalent of “you can extract it from a table elsewhere in the article” is not one. Not having the basic table there is somewhat like describing the human body verbally without providing a diagram (akin the Vitruvian Man) because you have a picture of a group of people with different physical disabilities or extreme physical attributes further down. — Christoph Päper 14:08, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I also strongly disagree with the OP, i think the small table is a very valuable tool for people to look up or even learn katakana. At least i am missing it, that's why i'm taking time to comment here. i understand the OP has put a lot of effort in the big table which is more elaborate and complete but this does not mean that the brief summarized table should go. or should we remove the introduction or brief summary at the start of each article on Wikipedia too? Please put it back, or let's have a vote on it. The real bicky (talk) 22:05, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

The smaller table with no explanations other than that the rows indicate consonants and the columns indicate vowels does not particularly improve the article, and comparing it to the lede does not work, as it is not necessary to summarize a table as much as it is necessary to summarize text. And the smaller table only works if we're using Kunrei-shiki, as it does not indicate the shi, chi, tsu, or fu idiosyncrasies, and there is no adequate way of including the N or other phonemic markers.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:13, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

That’s the common way to deal with the basic characters. Pronunciation is unnecessary when discussing the character set / inventory, since you only need to be able to identify each character: think of, for instance, the roman letter h and how it is called in English – its name bears no resemblance of its pronunciation(s), likewise SI or TU. N has several more or less appropriate and common positions in such a table, in the N- or the vowel row/column or in a row by itself either in a random column, most appropriately, in my opinion, in the -U one. — Christoph Päper 14:08, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm the only one objecting because you pulled The real bicky out of nowhere. He has not made any edits in over a year and his first edit is to come to this page when he has never edited anything concerning the Japanese language at all in the five years he's been on Wikipedia. I do not think he came here on his own accord.

And Crissov, you are just copying the gojūon table rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, and without giving the transcriptions or IPA pronunciations. It does not provide any more information than the much larger table on this page. And comparing an article on biology/anthropology with one on linguistics is an extreme stretch. The smaller table is of no use to us here. Both Katakana and Hiragana have done fine without a second duplicate table that contains less information than the larger one two sections down for years.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 18:46, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Honestly i am a bit disgusted by your reply. I have no connection to Crissov whatsoever. I am traveling to Japan next week for work and i wanted to learn katakana such that i can read the many english words in japanese language (and my company's name in japanese). I found the compact, small table a great help and look(ed) it up very regularly for reference. To my surprise it disappeared suddenly so i looked in the history and discussion, and decided to post my opinion as i felt the small table is valuable and was injustly removed. Further I don't see whether editing often or not matters here, many more people read wikipedia than wright it. The real bicky (talk) 21:31, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

So you can't scroll down another page and look at the larger table which has plenty more on it?—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:34, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Sure i can, but sometimes less is more. Your table is very nice and complete but to get an overview or a quick look-up the small table is more handy. Don't take it personal. And what's the harm in displaying both tables? There's plenty of space on Wikipedia. Anyway, i took a copy of the small table for my reference so do whatever you like. It's just a pity that other people won't be able anymore to get the handy small table. I had forgotten but it's this kind of discussions and pedantry that kept me from editing and commenting Wikipedia... The real bicky (talk) 08:20, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

The smaller table told you nothing that the larger table doesn't tell you in greater detail. And it's not my table. It's the table that's been on this article in some form for three years. The smaller table serves no purpose and does not provide any useful information that the larger table does not already supply. There is no such thing as a "summary table" anywhere else.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 10:31, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

You just don't get it. Nevermind. *plonk* The real bicky (talk) 13:01, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Transcription into Katakana

I have just started the transcription into Japanese article. My intention is to remove the disruptive “extended katakana” table from this article and only feature it there. — Christoph Päper 08:15, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Since nobody opposed this plan for two weeks, I will now remove the lower part of the big table in this article. — Christoph Päper 08:28, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

"スィ" and "ズィ" is /si/ and /zi/, not /swi/ and /zwi/

According to the reference No.8, "スィ" is pronounced as /si/[si], not /swi/[sʷi]. Row S column i is occupied by "シ(/shi/[ɕi])," so they use another way to represent /si/. So do its dakuten version "ズィ"/zi/[zi]. 118.167.42.48 (talk) 18:22, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Fixed.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 19:11, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Pronunciation of ツュ

Currently, ツュ has the pronunciation of [t͡sʲu͍], which I have some doubt on. In Japanese, [sʲ] is replaced by [ɕ] (ex: シャ is pronounced [ɕa] instead of [sʲa]). (This is why I didn't add the IPA for ツュ but someone else added it.) Then, [t͡sʲ] would be replaced by [t͡ɕ], and the pronunciation of ツュ would become [t͡ɕu͍] instead of [t͡sʲu͍]. I don't think either [sʲ] or [t͡sʲ] exists in Japanese. --Unnecessary stuff (talk) 01:53, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

There is no such description and sound. I removed ツュ. Oda Mari (talk) 06:13, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

what happened?

What happened to the chart extension that showed extensions to the katakana table for foreign sounds. many of them had citations to institutions who used them and a handbook. It included extensions for voiced w(v), semi voiced r (l), and youon for ts, f, ch, j, sh that have been used in many publications and cited in handbooks and institutional use.kUCEEZ 20:44, 21 January 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kuceez (talk • contribs)

Transcription into Japanese, see #Transcription into Katakana few paragraphs above. — Christoph Päper 22:05, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to restore "extended" katakana to this article

I would like to propose that the "extended" katakana, which were hived off to Transcription into Japanese, are restored to this article. I also propose that the katakana tables are made into templates (perhaps one for regular and one for extended?) so that they can be included in both articles without the duplication of source text that currently exists for the regular katakana. This kind of duplication is a bad idea as it doubles maintenance effort (that's even assuming an editor knows that they need to make changes in two places). 86.160.82.236 (talk) 03:55, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I’m against the first part of the proposal, but once upon a time I started {{Kana table}}, which doesn’t work perfectly yet. — Christoph Päper 08:44, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

On reflection, I believe you may be correct as far as the first part is concerned. I have gone ahead and implemented the tables as templates so we do not have the duplication and all the maintenance issues that entails. 86.177.107.165 (talk) 21:20, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Inconsistency

See Talk:Japanese writing system/Archives/2012#Inconsistency. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.107.165 (talk) 18:46, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Structure

I am somewhat tempted to do away with this "Language-independent script" heading, and associated concept, in the article. I think it gives a misleading impression that katakana has a life and existence independent of Japanese. While katakana has been coopted into use with some other languages, and this is rightly documented later in the article, it seems to me that katakana is fundamentally wholly Japanese, and that the aforementioned distinction, especially so prominent at the start of the article, is unhelpful. Before I change it, I solicit other people's opinions. 86.177.107.165 (talk) 01:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

This article, like hiragana, often had the tendency to become a guide to contemporary Japanese orthography. For all writing it actually makes sense to distinguish a system (script) and its instances (writing systems), even if only one instance is known or predominates. Scripts change and evolve slowly, i.e. over centuries or millennia even, whereas writing systems adapt more quickly. One could reasonably speak of at least five different, though closely related, Japanese writing systems in the past 200 years. Authors are often tempted to describe the most recent variant only or in much greater detail. This is what articles like kanazukai are for, whereas articles like kana, katakana and hiragana should be as language-neutral and diachronic as possible and as pan-language as necessary. For less prominent / important / recent / researched scripts it may make sense to combine everything in one article.

I don’t care much whether “Language-independent ” remains as a part of the section heading, though, as long as its content stays as neutral as it is. — Christoph Päper 00:19, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I take your points. I guess another difficulty I have with the current structure is that I read the "Language-independent script" section, and I understand the 5x10 + 1 idea, with a few missing "holes", and then I hit "The Japanese syllabary consists of 48 syllabograms, of which two are obsolete, and one is preserved only for a single use...", and it seems like I'm starting all over again, trying to superimpose and merge one set of exceptions on another, without really even understanding my starting point. It confuses the heck out of me, and I am actually pretty familiar with katakana. 81.159.106.29 (talk) 17:27, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Since you say you don't mind, I have removed "Language-independent" from the heading and left it at just "Script". 86.171.174.159 (talk) 20:03, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Recent Findings of Japanese professor..

I want to point out that at least part of information in the section "History" is outdated and might be misleading. I am talking about so-called recent findings about possible korean origin of katakana. First of all, those "findings" are not recent at all. They were made in 2002, thus 10 years have passed. Secondly, the theory of Yosinori Kobayasi failed to provide enough evidence, and as such was denied by most of the scientists not only of Japan, but Korea as well. Detailed information can be found in the article of Japanese wikipedia(http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%89%87%E4%BB%AE%E5%90%8D). I think, either this part should be deleted, or newer information about the status of the theory must be added(denied because of lack of evidence). Sorry for poor english. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.73.117.111 (talk) 17:54, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I think, personally, that in the context of Japanese language studies, 10 years ago could count as "recent". I have no opinion on the plausibility of that theory though. 86.160.214.75 (talk) 02:23, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Romaji

On the basis of this discussion, I previously removed the reference to "romaji" from the opening paragraph, but it has now been put back in. To recap, the question is whether "romaji" means any use of the Roman alphabet, or specifically means Japanese words transliterated into the Roman alphabet. If the latter, the reference in the opening paragraph does not seem appropriate, since that part is talking about the use of words, names, or abbreviations borrowed from languages, such as English, that use the Roman alphabet, and inserted into Japanese text. It is not talking about Japanese words transliterated into the Roman alphabet. Admittedly the discussion linked above was not completely conclusive, but in the end I went with the opinion of the native Japanese speaker. Does anyone have any further opinions about this? 02:32, 28 August 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.160.214.75 (talk)

PS, well fancy that, I have just stumbled across another discussion about this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Japanese_language#Incorrect_use_of_the_term_.22romaji.22 86.160.214.75 (talk) 02:59, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

These big words aren't helping me

The Script section contains a paragraph that reads

This is, however, not the case synchronically and also never has been diachronically.

I think this can be changed to

However, this is not the case now, and never has been.

The result is easier to understand and - as far as I can tell - has the same meaning. I would have just changed it myself, but wanted to check that I'm not missing something.

59.167.161.63 (talk) 12:21, 2 December 2012 (UTC)