Trading Company of Boston
Trading Company of Boston |
About Katakana |
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Although Chinese characters, or Kanji, had been adapted into Japanese several hundred years prior to the development of the Kana phonetic syllabaries, the polysyllabic and inflected Japanese language was not easily expressed with a writing system devised for the monosyllabic Chinese language. The Chinese language lacked inflected items such as verb stems commonly found in Japanese such as -mashita, -masu, and -masen, (i.e. in English, -ing, -ish, -ed, etc.). Hence verbs were expressed by a principle Chinese character which imparted the root meaning, followed by other cumbersome Kanji which came to represent the verb's variable phonetic verb stem (i.e. had been, will be, could, etc.). This combination of a Kanji with semantic meaning, followed by other Chinese characters having only phonetic meaning, was naturally confusing. An early solution was to write the verb stem Kanji smaller than the root character, or to write the phonetic Kanji to the side of the vertical script. |
| All About Particles (Power Japanese). | ||||||
| By the ninth century the phonetic Kanji had been simplified into two standardized and parallel phonetic syllabaries known as Kana, or quite literally, "assumed names". Each Kana symbol derived from a Chinese character of the same sound, but became devoid of semantic meaning. Katakana (literally "side script"), is the more angular of the phonetic syllabaries and was the first of the Kana syllabaries. It was invented by Kibi no Makibi (AD 693-755) by the simplification of a single element or radical from each of the phonetic Kanji. Each Katakana symbol was derived from a Chinese character in the same way as each Hiragana symbol, except that the Hiragana were simplified from entire characters. Katakana were initially used only as a pronunciation aids in Buddhist scriptures, but were mixed with Chinese characters as they are now from the ninth century on. |
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| Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II. | ||||||
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In modern times, the two syllabaries have differentiated into distinct usages within written Japanese. Katakana are now used to write loan words (foreign words brought into Japanese). Such borrowing usually occurred when the Japanese language lacked a native word to express a foreign idea. Though loan words have come from Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and other languages. The modern post-war history of Japan's relationship with the United States has in fact led to English origin loan words being in the majority of foreign words expressed in Japanese. Hence, modern Japanese has a large number of words that English speaking people can easily recognize. As they are generally rendered in Katakana, it is quite logical for English speaking people to begin their study of written Japanese with the Katakana script. | ||||
| Mastering Japanese, 10 Compact Disks and fast-paced Textbook. Based on Eleanor Jordan's Yale University curriculum, this program does not lend itself to laziness, but is for those interested in well designed, but tough audio drills. | ||||||
Katakana are also used in Japanese for a few other purposes:
If you would like to study the Katakana on-line, we have adapted the Katakana lessons in READING JAPANESE, by Eleanor Harz Jorden and Hamako Ito Chaplin, to the world wide web. This 144 page Katakana tutorial may well be most complete Katakana study resouce available anywhere. |
| FACT: A strategy based on sound research can mobilize and compel Kanji to contribute to conversational skills. See The Kanji Way to Japanese Language Power |
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