Katakana

Katakana カタカナ
Type	Syllabary
Languages	Japanese, Okinawan, Ainu, Palauan
Time period	~800 AD to the present
Parent systems	Oracle Bone Script Seal Script Clerical Script Regular script (Kanji) Man'yōgana Katakana カタカナ
Sister systems	Hiragana, Hentaigana
Direction	Left-to-right
ISO 15924	Kana, 411
Unicode alias	Katakana
Unicode range	Katakana: U+30A0–U+30FF Katakana Phonetic Extensions: U+31F0–U+31FF Enclosed CJK Letters and Months: U+3200–U+32FF Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms: U+FF00–U+FFEF Kana Supplement: U+1B000–U+1B0FF

Katakana (, カタカナ^?) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana,kanji, and in some cases the Latin script (known as romaji). The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components of more complex kanji. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable (strictly mora) in the Japanese language is represented by one character, or kana, in each system. Each kana is either a vowel such as "a" (katakana ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka" (katakana ); or "n" (katakana ), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n, or ng ([ŋ]), or like the nasal vowels of Portuguese.

In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for those Japanese language words and grammatical inflections which kanji does not cover, the katakana syllabary usage is quite similar to italics in English; specifically, it is used for transcription of foreign language words into Japanese and the writing of loan words (collectively gairaigo); for emphasis; to represent onomatopoeia; for technical and scientific terms; and for names of plants, animals, minerals, and often Japanese companies.