All for Japan and Japanese

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 alphabet.

In modern Japanese, katakana are most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages (called gairaigo). For example, “television” is written terebi (テレビ). Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names, foreign places, and personal names. For example, America is written アメリカ Amerika (America also has its own kanji (ateji) Amerika (亜米利加) or for short, Beikoku (米国), which literally means “Rice Country”).

Katakana are also often, but not always, used for transcription of Japanese company names. For example Suzukiis written スズキ, and Toyota is written トヨタ. Katakana are also used for emphasis, especially on signs, advertisements, and hoardings (i.e., billboards). For example, it is common to see ココ koko (“here”), ゴミ gomi(“trash”) or メガネ megane (“glasses”). Read more