Well, what exactly is kana? 仮名 (kana) are the two syllabaries used to create Japanese phonological units: Hiragana (平仮名/ひらがな) and katakana (片仮名/カタカナ). Kanji is another Japanese syllabary, but you don't have to worry about that right now if you're just beginning to learn the Japanese language. Hiragana and katakana both represent the same syllables, the difference is their function.
Functions of Hiragana and Katakana
Hiragana is generally used for all purely Japanese words that aren't kanji, and as grammatical functions such as particles. We'll cover particles later. Hiragana is also used to transcribe the pronounciation of words written in kanji (this is called furigana). Katakana is generally used to write foreign-derived words/names and the names of plants/animals in scientific context. It can also be used to emphasize words, like the function of italics in English.
How Many Kana are There?
Hiragana and katakana both have 46 basic syllable characters and 25 basic syllable characters with a diacritical mark. 12 of the 46 basic syllable characters come in a smaller size. There's a total of 256 syllables, many of which are just combined characters. Take a look at these charts: hiragana chart and katakana chart.
Hiragana (平仮名/ひらがな) Basics
Hiragana is the basic Japanese phoenetic script, representing every sound in the Japanese language. Some characters might be written slightly differently when on paper than typed, so it's important to learn the correct stroke order. Let's look at this chart. Except for し、ち、つ、and ん, you can get a sense of how each character is pronounced by matching the consonant to the vowel. Once you're done memorizing these, there's still more to be learned. There's five more consonant sounds that're written by affixing a dakuten (濁点) or handakuten (半濁点). These create what is called a voiced consonant. You can look at a voiced consonant chart for hiragana here. In addition, there are small hiragana characters called youon. Take a look at this chart here. You combine the consonant with the vowel to make a new syllable. For example, き with a small や would become きゃ (kya). Now, a small つ does not get combined to make a new syllable. In fact, it's inserted between two characters to carry the consonant sound of the second character to the end of the first. For example, はっぱ becomes "happa." Lastly, the long vowel sounds. You can extend the vowel of a character by adding あ、い、or う depending on the vowel. /a/ → あ, /i/e/ → い, /u/o/ → う. For example, since く ends with /u/, く → くう.
Katakana (片仮名/カタカナ) Basics
Katakana represents the same phonetic sounds as hiragana, except every character is different. Sounds in Japanese are not as flexible as other languages, so foreign words that are transcribed to katakana often don't sound like the original. Besides foreign words and plant/animal names in the scientific context, katakana is used for many foods, many company names, emphasis, onomatopoeias, and stylistic purposes. Katakana is harder to master since you won't use it as often as you will Hiragana, but that's okay. Learning a new language takes time. Just like hiragana, it is important to learn the correct stroke order.Now that we got the intro out of the way, we can move onto actually learning katakana. There are also small katakana characters, ア、イ、ウ、エ、and オ. Due to limitations of sound in hiragana, new combinations have been made over the years. This is where ア、イ、ウ、エ、and オ come in. "Du" does not exist as a character, but by using ドゥ, we can make it. Next, the long vowel sound: we can make a long vowel sound by using a dash like so: ー. "Cute" in katakana would be キュート (kyuuto). The ー drags out the previous vowel.
 |