The Last Katakana Rows and Your First Real Loanwords

The rows that finish the chart

Yesterday you met ア カ サ タ ナ — five rows of katakana that sound exactly like hiragana you already know. Today we add the last five rows: ハ マ ヤ ラ ワ, plus the single character ン. That completes the set. After today, every katakana you see on a menu or a train sign is a shape you have met.

Here they are, with their hiragana twins in brackets so you can hear the sound you already own:

• ハ (は) ha, ヒ (ひ) hi, フ (ふ) fu, ヘ (へ) he, ホ (ほ) ho
• マ (ま) ma, ミ (み) mi, ム (む) mu, メ (め) me, モ (も) mo
• ヤ (や) ya, ユ (ゆ) yu, ヨ (よ) yo
• ラ (ら) ra, リ (り) ri, ル (る) ru, レ (れ) re, ロ (ろ) ro
• ワ (わ) wa, ヲ (を) o (rare in modern katakana), ン (ん) n

Notice that ヤ row has only three characters, just like hiragana. And ワ has a companion ヲ that almost never appears — you can safely ignore it for now.

Shapes worth a second look

A few of these are easy to mix up with each other or with characters from earlier rows.

マ and ム. マ has a horizontal top stroke and a diagonal sweeping down-left. ム is like a small triangle with a tail: a diagonal down-left, a sharp turn right, then a short diagonal down-left again. マ is wider; ム is compact.

シ and ツ were yesterday's problem — we will drill them properly tomorrow. For today, just note that ツ has two short strokes on top and シ has two on the left. You will see both in loanwords.

ン and ソ. ン (n) has a short stroke that starts low and rises to the right, then a longer curve down. ソ (so) has a short stroke that starts high and falls to the left, then a longer curve. The short stroke's direction is the clue. Again, tomorrow is dedicated to these four.

ラ and ヲ. ラ is a horizontal line with a second horizontal below and a curve. ヲ is like a number 7 with an extra horizontal. You will rarely need ヲ.

Katakana earns its keep: loanwords

This is the payoff. Katakana is used for foreign words, and now you can read them. The sounds are not always obvious from the English, because Japanese adapts the pronunciation to its own syllable set. But the patterns are regular.

Take コーヒー（こーひー）— coffee. The long vowel mark ー stretches the vowel. コ is ko, ヒ is hi, so ko-o-hi-i. The middle ー after コ makes the o long; the final ー after ヒ makes the i long. Say it slowly: koohii.

ホテル（ほてる）— hotel. ホ ho, テ te, ル ru. Ho-te-ru. The final ル stands in for the English "l" sound, which Japanese does not have as a separate consonant.

パン（ぱん）— bread, from Portuguese pão. パ pa, ン n. The small circle on ハ makes it p-, a sound you will see in many loanwords.

Here is a short list you can read right now with today's rows and yesterday's:

• カメラ（かめら）— camera
• ラジオ（らじお）— radio
• メロン（めろん）— melon
• ワイン（わいん）— wine
• ルール（るーる）— rule
• モデル（もでる）— model

And some with the new rows mixed in:

• ホーム（ほーむ）— platform (as in a train station)
• マナー（まなー）— manners
• ヤクルト（やくると）— Yakult (the drink)
• ロボット（ろぼっと）— robot

Notice that ロボット has a small ッ — a double consonant. You do not pronounce it as a separate sound; you pause briefly before the next consonant. Ro-bo-t-to, with a tiny hold before the t.

A note on long vowels

The ー mark is not a letter. It means "hold the previous vowel for one more beat." So コーヒー is four beats: ko-o-hi-i. In your city you will see this on café signs — コーヒー is one of the first words that becomes automatic.

Reading in the wild

Try this sign, the kind you might see in a station in your country:

ホテル・グランド・ワイン

Ho-te-ru · gu-ra-n-do · wa-i-n. Hotel Grand Wine. You just read a made-up hotel name using every row from today and yesterday. The ・ is a separator between words, common in katakana phrases.

One more, a real one: コーヒーショップ (koohii shoppu) — coffee shop. ショップ has a small ョ and a small ッ. The small ョ changes シ (shi) to ショ (sho). The small ッ doubles the p.

The last piece

You now have the full katakana chart. But there is a reason people still stumble: four characters — シ ツ ソ ン — look almost identical at speed. Tomorrow we isolate exactly those four and drill the stroke direction that tells them apart. If you have ever read ソ as ン and gotten a nonsense word, tomorrow is for you.