|
Katakana represents the same set of phonetic sounds as hiragana but all the characters are different. ‘Kata’ means ‘partial’ or fragmentary which alludes to the evolution of the script from specific selected parts of more complex kanji through manyo’ugana. katakana was originally considered ‘men's writing’, the glyphs are characterized by short straight strokes and angular corners. Katakana provides a useful stepping stone into learning kanji; as you will see common evidence of various katakana components, and its linear character developed in kanji.
Katakana differs slightly from hiragana. It uses a vowel extender mark called a cho’uon, which does not appear in hiragana, which is often employed when writing foreign loan-words. This lengthens a vowel to be is pronounced approximately twice as long as a short vowel (e.g. department (store) デパート ‘depaato’ ).We will look at this again in the section on ‘phonetic symbols’.
The use of small tsu ッ to accent the following consonant is similar to hiragana. For example, bed is written in katakana as ベッド (beddo). This construction may be used as an approximation on occasions in which Japanese has no equivalent native sound.
Katakana employes a range of ‘vowel glides’ which are not generally used in hiragana, which help in increasing the range of syllables available to the Japanese to approximate foreign names and loan words. These often use ‘u-column kana’ and are represented in gaigana by an apostrophe between the two vowels (e.g. ニ ェ ni’e) which marks them apart from ‘youon’ three-letter glides (e.g. にょ nyo’). Certain glides such as the ‘v-column’ may only be written in katakana e.g. ヴァor ‘v’a’.
|
