Katakana characters

There are 46 basic katakana, which can be modified to make over a hundred characters. However, the last modified katakana are very rare, which is why you will learn the most important 112 katakana characters with WordDive. The hiragana characters are more central to building your language skills.

With WordDive, you will automatically learn the katakana characters in order of priority.

Writing in katakana

After installing Japanese support, select Full-width katakana as the input language.

Now the characters are typed in Latin alphabet as usual, apart from the exceptions below.

Entering exceptional katakana characters

The lengthened vowel mark, which is common in katakana text "ー" (e.g. in アイスクリーム, aisukuriimu, ice-cream), is entered by pressing the + key in the number row of your keyboard.

Below are listed the other katakana characters with exceptional input.

The katakana on the latter list are rare, and you might never need to use them. However, it is useful to know the method of writing these characters: adding the small character which causes the large character to be pronounced differently.

« Back
WordDive Homepage »