Katakana is one of the three written languages used in Japanese. I like to describe it like this:
Kanji- Chinese characters that will give you a headache. Used for Japanese words.
Hiragana: Japanese characters that are wavy and beautiful. Used for Japanese words.
Katakana: Japanese characters that are very rigid and straight. Used for foreign/loan words.
So, what's my beef with Katakana? Well, personally, I hate it! I'm terrible at reading and writing it (even after studying Japanese for 4+ years). AND there are many Japanese natives who confess that they have trouble with it!
One reason that katakana is so hard for Japanese learners is (and this is just my opinion) that it doesn't have enough characters to compensate for all of the phonemes found in other languages.
Here's an example:
 |
| Yummy oil! |
If you look at the big, blue letters you'll read:
ヘルシー
ライト
In other words, "healthy" and "Lite/Light" (oil with low cholesterol ).
What's wrong you say? Well, the word ライト can also refer to the word "right" or "rite". In fact, when I first read this word (on this bottle of oil) I let slip the "right" before correcting it to "lite". This is just one out of possibly hundreds of examples, but the bottom line is, the current system of Katakana is not sufficient for all words that could possibly be borrowed from around the world.
Well, I want to offer a suggestion (instead of just ragging on Japanese). Perhaps, the government should think about adding more characters or symbols (in addition to ゛ and ゜) to this written language. For example an additional symbol to this ラ could help us know if this should be an /l/ or /ɹ/.
I think Kanji and Hiragana are fine the way they are, but Katakana I believe will continue to be used more and more as Japan is influenced more and more by foreign entities.
Have you had any difficulties reading, writing, or remembering Katakana? What do you think? Please leave your comments below.
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