In this skill
Katakana is the alphabet Japan uses for foreign words, and foreign words are mostly English: a menu that says ビール・コーヒー・アイスクリーム is a menu that says beer, coffee, ice cream in a costume. Learn the costume and whole shelves of Japan switch back into a language you already read.
Two facts make this far cheaper than it looks. First, you already own every sound — Lesson 0 trained the entire sound inventory, so nothing here is new to your ears or mouth; each character just assigns a shape to a sound you have. Second, most of the drill words below are words you already know by ear — koohii, biiru, takushii, kaado — so the script is the only new thing on the page.
One big inversion, this module only: everywhere else the course says play first, then read. Here your eyes go first: look at the character, say it out loud, then tap — the audio plays and the romaji appears to check you. Same drill in the Anki deck: katakana on the front, sound and romaji on the back.
Budget an evening to meet all the characters, and the rest of the trip to make them stick — every sign you pass is a free flashcard. (Two rare characters, ヂ and ヅ, and the archaic ヲ are omitted; you can go years in Japan without meeting them.)
The five vowels — and the long bar
Lesson 0’s five pure vowels, now with faces. And one non-character first, because you’ll see it inside half the words below: the long bar ー just stretches the vowel before it — it’s Lesson 0’s held vowel, made visible. コ is ko; コー is koo.
Every character from here on is one of these five vowels riding a consonant, in the same order — a, i, u, e, o — row after row. Learn the pattern once and each new row is one consonant, not five characters.
K, S, T, N
Twenty characters, four consonants. Three irregulars to respect — the S row’s シ shi, the T row’s チ chi and ツ tsu — they’re irregular in exactly the way Lesson 0 taught your mouth, so trust your ears over the grid.
k —
s —
t —
n —
The costume’s rules
One more piece of theory before your first real words — the only theory this page needs. Japanese has a smaller sound inventory than English (the one Lesson 0 trained), so every English word got bent to fit on its way into katakana. The bends are regular: learn them once, and whenever a sounded-out word seems like nonsense, run them backward and say the result at English speed. The original usually pops right out.
| The bend | You read | You hear |
|---|---|---|
| Consonants can’t stand alone — each picks up a vowel (usually u; after t/d it’s o) | basu, aisukuriimu | bus, ice cream |
| There’s no L — it lands on the tapped R | hoteru, miruku | hotel, milk |
| There’s no V — it lands on B | erebeetaa | elevator |
| R after a vowel melts into a long vowel (-er/-ar/-or → ー) | kaado, hanbaagaa | card, hamburger |
| TH becomes S or Z | sankyuu | thank you |
| Punchy short syllables grow a held beat — Lesson 0’s kippu catch (its mark, small ッ, is taught below) | chekku, hottodoggu | check, hot dog |
| F rides fu (plus built sounds like fa/fi — also below) | furonto, wai-fai | front (desk), Wi-Fi |
| Long words get clipped — often to four beats | konbini, toire, sumaho | convenience (store), toilet, smartphone |
Some of these you’ve been saying for lessons without noticing the costume — konbini, toire, hoteru, and kaado are all mutated English. Every drill word from here on is a bend or three at work.
One caution before you trust the trick: not everything in katakana is English. Some loanwords arrived from elsewhere — pan (bread, Lesson 5’s word) is Portuguese, arubaito (part-time job) is German Arbeit, and on a sushi menu ikura is Russian for salmon roe, not Lesson 3’s “how much.” Japanese also writes some of its own words in katakana — animal names especially (neko, kuma, usagi — cat, bear, rabbit), plus menu items like gari (pickled ginger). So when a cleanly decoded word refuses to turn into English, you didn’t misread it — it may just not be English. You already own the move for that: Kore wa nan desu ka.
Twenty-five characters in, and you can already read. Say each of these out loud before tapping:
Takushii has been yours since Lesson 6 — now it’s yours in writing too. The others are marked read, don’t memorize: they exist to exercise the characters (though katsu curry and steak have a way of becoming vocabulary at dinnertime anyway).
H, M, Y, R, W — and the lone n
Twenty-one more and the basic alphabet is done. One irregular: the H row’s フ fu (Lesson 0’s soft, blown fu — not an English F). And the standalone ン n — the humming beat from Lesson 0, the only character with no vowel.
h —
m —
y — (three only; the gaps died out centuries ago)
r — (Lesson 0’s Japanese r: soft tap, halfway to an L)
w, and the lone n —
The full basic alphabet is yours. Now it pays off — every one of these first six is a word you’ve owned for lessons:
Two dots and a small circle
Not new characters — one rule. Two small dots (゛) voice a consonant: k→g, s→z, t→d, h→b. A small circle (゜) turns h→p. Same shapes you just learned, new engine sounds: カ ka → ガ ga; ヒ hi → ビ bi → ピ pi.
g (k + ゛) —
z (s + ゛; ジ is ji) —
d (t + ゛; only three survive in practice) —
b (h + ゛) —
p (h + ゜) —
The dots unlock the words you use most:
The small characters
Three spelling habits, no new sounds — all three are Lesson 0 rhythm made visible:
- Small ッ is the held silent beat (the middle of kippu). ロッカー = ro…kkaa — you drilled that catch in Lesson 0.
- Small ャ・ュ・ョ glue onto an i-column character and fuse into one beat: シ + small ャ = シャ sha; ニ + small ュ = ニュ nyu.
- Small vowels (ァィゥェォ) build sounds Japanese didn’t have, for foreign words only: フ + small ァ = ファ fa. Katakana invents freely here — sound it out and trust your ear.
Say these before tapping — every rule above appears at least once:
The look-alikes
Four sets of near-twins cause almost every misreading. Don’t drill these harder — just learn the tells once and check back when a word refuses to make sense.
| The twins | The tell |
|---|---|
| シ shi / ツ tsu | シ’s small strokes lie flat and its long stroke sweeps up from below; ツ’s strokes stand tall and the long one sweeps down from above. |
| ソ so / ン n | Same tell, one stroke each: ソ sweeps down (tall first stroke), ン sweeps up (flat first stroke). |
| ク ku / ワ wa / フ fu | ク has a beak on the left; ワ is closed across the top; フ is a bare shelf — one corner, nothing else. |
| コ ko / ユ yu | コ is an open box; ユ has a floor sticking out past the wall. |
When a menu word comes out as nonsense, odds are one of these eight characters is the culprit — re-check them first.
Reading the bends
The costume’s rules from your first day with the characters — and now you can read every character they touch. All eight bends cold, aloud, then tap:
Sumaho is the clipping rule at full power: sumaatofon → four beats, no apology. Japanese does this to long loanwords constantly, which is why the shortened form on the sign may be one you have to sound out even when you’d recognize the full word.
The menu test
The graduation exam is any café menu in Japan. Here’s one. Cover the sounds, read each line aloud, then tap to check. All are read, don’t memorize — the point is decoding, though you may find you already know every one of them from home:
If you read all seven — slowly counts — you have the skill. Speed is just mileage now.
Every katakana word you own
The course keeps handing you katakana long after this page — nearly every booster adds a loanword or three. This list is the rest of them: every word in the core lessons and the shipped boosters whose written form is pure katakana, kept in sync automatically as new packs ship. Same drill as the words above: read first, aloud, then tap to check. The reveal names the lesson or booster each word comes from — if one is unfamiliar, that’s the pack that teaches it.
How to practice
- The konbini is your flashcard deck. Drink bottles, snack shelves, and ice-cream freezers are 90% katakana, and the picture on the package confirms your answer instantly. Five minutes of shelf-reading a day beats any app.
- Menus over signs. Restaurant menus reward you constantly (most items are loanwords); street signs are mostly kanji and will only discourage you. Read where katakana lives.
- Slow is correct. Sounding a word out character by character is reading — natives watching you decode ハンバーガー are watching a person read, not a person struggle.
- Don’t chase the last 10%. A handful of rare characters and combinations will stump you occasionally; the camera app (see Beyond) remains the right tool for those. This module’s job is the daily 90%.
Anki deck
This deck runs backwards from every other deck in the course: the katakana is on the front — read it aloud, then flip for the audio and romaji. Character cards and word cards together: download the Katakana Anki deck. Drill all of it; unlike the lesson decks, there’s nothing here to suspend — the characters are the course.