While the English name is derived from the katakana spelling, the actual kanji spelling for Subaru, 昴, refers to the Seven Sisters, or the Pleiades, star cluster. Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about katakana. Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible). キャ (ki + ya) /kja/. For example, a drink that is given "on the house" to a regular customer. Katakana is also used for traditional musical notations, as in the Tozan-ryū of shakuhachi, and in sankyoku ensembles with koto, shamisen and shakuhachi. Addition of the small y kana is called yōon. The complete katakana script consists of 48 characters, not counting functional and diacritic marks: noun:. This study list contains all the vocabulary introduced in the Hiragana and Katakana lessons. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable (strictly mora) in the Japanese language is represented by one character or kana, in each system. A double dot, called dakuten, indicates a primary alteration; most often it voices the consonant: k→g, s→z, t→d and h→b; for example, カ (ka) becomes ガ (ga). Here, it is shown in a table of its own. Define katakana. The katakana are all phonetic characters, each character represents the sound it produces, and not the meaning. Katakana is significantly tougher to master compared to Hiragana because it is only used for certain words and you don’t get nearly as much practice as you do with Hiragana. The Unicode block for (full-width) katakana is U+30A0–U+30FF. In Ainu katakana usage, the consonant that comes at the end of a syllable is represented by a small version of a katakana that corresponds to that final consonant followed by an arbitrary vowel. It’s the standard way to write for clarity and understanding. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. There are two main systems of ordering katakana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering. This is a selected list of gairaigo, Japanese words originating or based on foreign-language (generally Western) terms, including wasei-eigo (Japanese pseudo-Anglicisms).. You can memorize the alphabet in just a couple of weeks! It is arranged in a traditional matter, where characters are organized by the sounds that make them up. It doesn't allow for an exact transliteration, thus introducing a thick Japanese accent. Katakana are also sometimes used to indicate words being spoken in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent. Hiragana is the composing style that is utilized in the Japanese publications. It uses many extensions and yōon to show the many non-Japanese sounds of Okinawan. To learn the proper stroke order (and yes, you need to), here is a link to practice sheets for Katakana. A circled ン (n) is not included. For example, the United States is usually referred to as アメリカ Amerika, rather than in its ateji kanji spelling of 亜米利加 Amerika. The other script, katakana, is used for example to indicate loan words from languages like English, the names of animals and plants, for some company names, such as Suzuki, and for emphasis. [12][13] Linguist Alexander Vovin elaborates on Kobayashi's argument, asserting that katakana derives from the Korean gugyeol (구결) system. Some instructors teaching Japanese as a foreign language "introduce katakana after the students have learned to read and write sentences in hiragana without difficulty and know the rules. japanese-lesson.com The gojūon inherits its vowel and consonant order from Sanskrit practice. These are encoded within the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block (U+FF00–U+FFEF) (which also includes full-width forms of Latin characters, for instance), starting at U+FF65 and ending at U+FF9F (characters U+FF61–U+FF64 are half-width punctuation marks). Both approaches conceal the fact, though, that many consonant-based katakana signs, especially those canonically ending in u, can be used in coda position, too, where the vowel is unvoiced and therefore barely perceptible. 45 syllables, which can be further modified with accents "=b and °=p, prolongations (nigori) and smaller versions of vowels, ya-yu-yo and tsu. In the late 1970s, two-byte character sets such as JIS X 0208 were introduced to support the full range of Japanese characters, including katakana, hiragana and kanji. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide (palatalization) to a, u or o, e.g. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, including Hakka and Formosan languages. Katakana (片仮名, カタカナ or かたかな) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with Hiragana, Kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. Unlike English, where the letters can have many different pronunciations, the Japanese alphabet is always read exactly the same. See How to Translate Your Name to Japanese for why it became this way. The system was devised by the Okinawa Center of Language Study of the University of the Ryukyus. For example, Suzuki is written スズキ, and Toyota is written トヨタ. Another name for the small kana would be sutegana 捨て仮名, although that term may sometimes refer to the okurigana 送り仮名 instead. Even when put together in words, they never change. The sokuon may also be used to approximate a non-native sound: Bach is written バッハ (Bahha); Mach as マッハ (Mahha). Some Japanese personal names are written in katakana. For instance "up" is represented by ウㇷ゚ (ウプ [u followed by small pu]). It's easy! Katakana is commonly used by Japanese linguists to write the Ainu language. Katakana, meaning “fragmentary kana,” are used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords and onomatopoeia. Japanese is a language with many borrowed words, and katakana immediately alerts the reader to the fact that the word is an imported one. In vertical text contexts, which used to be the default case, the grid is usually presented as 10 columns by 5 rows, with vowels on the right hand side and ア (a) on top. divining; fortune-telling; divination or katakana to radical (no. Your input looks like it might be romanized Japanese 「 default 」. Learn Hiragana & Katakana with an Online Quiz. For backward compatibility, separate support for half-width katakana has continued to be available in modern multi-byte encoding schemes such as Unicode, by having two separate blocks of characters – one displayed as usual (full-width) katakana, the other displayed as half-width katakana. See How to Translate Your Name to Japanese for why it became this way. The following table shows the method for writing each katakana character. "[7] Most students who have learned hiragana "do not have great difficulty in memorizing" katakana as well. This was the approach taken by the influential American linguistics scholar Eleanor Harz Jorden in Japanese: The Written Language (parallel to Japanese: The Spoken Language).[9]. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems. Several popular Japanese encodings such as EUC-JP, Unicode and Shift JIS have half-width katakana code as well as full-width. Katakana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojūon kana without them. katakana synonyms, katakana pronunciation, katakana translation, English dictionary definition of katakana. Katakana 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). Post the Definition of katakana to Facebook, Share the Definition of katakana on Twitter. Katakana (片仮名, カタカナ or かたかな) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with Hiragana, Kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet.The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Three of the syllabograms to be expected, yi, ye and wu, may have been used idiosyncratically with varying glyphs, but never became conventional in any language and are not present at all in modern Japanese. The Unicode block for Katakana Phonetic Extensions is U+31F0–U+31FF: Historic and variant forms of Japanese kana characters were added to the Unicode standard in October 2010 with the release of version 6.0. Of the 48 katakana syllabograms described above, only 46 are used in modern Japanese, and one of these is preserved for only a single use: A small version of the katakana for ya, yu or yo (ャ, ュ or ョ, respectively) may be added to katakana ending in i. It functioned as a phonetic guide for Chinese characters, much like furigana in Japanese or Zhùyīn fúhào in Chinese. Font designers may want to optimize the display of these composed glyphs. Unlike the hiragana system, used for Japanese language words that kanji does not cover, the katakana syllabary is used primarily for transcription of foreign language words into Japanese and the writing of loan words (collectively gairaigo), as well as to represent onomatopoeias, technical and scientific terms, and the names of plants, animals, and minerals. Some of the most useful Japanese words are untranslatable onomatopoeia, such as ギリ … In most words each letter stands for a bit of sound. Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names, foreign places, and foreign personal names. ... Katakana. Results, katakana dictionary カタカナ語 辞 典 【 カタカナごじてん KATAKANAgojiten 】. In modern Japanese, katakana is most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages or loanwords (other than words historically imported from Chinese), called gairaigo. The Unicode block for Kana Supplement is U+1B000–U+1B0FF: The Unicode block for Small Kana Extension is U+1B130–U+1B16F: Furthermore, as of Unicode 13.0, the following combinatory sequences have been explicitly named, despite having no precomposed symbols in the katakana block. See How to Translate Your Name to Japanese for why it became this way. To convert romaji to kana, see this page . Some of the most useful Japanese words are untranslatable onomatopoeia, such as ギリギリ (girigiri). This phenomenon is often seen with medical terminology. But it’s used to signal to the reader that a word is foreign, adapted to Japanese from another language. For … Katakana was developed in the 9th century (during the early Heian period) by Buddhist monks in Nara by taking parts of man'yōgana characters as a form of shorthand, hence this kana is so-called kata (片, "partial, fragmented"). For example, ka (カ) comes from the left side of ka (加, lit. Katakana is a Japanese script used for writing words borrowed from other … Learn Hiragana & Katakana with an Online Quiz. Both katakana and hiragana usually spell native long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana. Official documents of the Empire of Japan were written exclusively with kyūjitai and katakana. This was particularly common among women in the Meiji and Taishō periods, when many poor, illiterate parents were unwilling to pay a scholar to give their daughters names in kanji. This English-to-katakana converter is based on these rules for conversion. Furthermore, some characters may have special semantics when used in smaller sizes after a normal one (see below), but this does not make the script truly bicameral. In a syllabary each symbol stands for a syllable. The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Like Japanese? Although words borrowed from ancient Chinese are usually written in kanji, loanwords from modern Chinese dialects that are borrowed directly use katakana instead. In Japanese, katakana-go カタカナ語 (also katakanago), and sometimes katakana kotoba カタカナ言葉, "katakana words," refers to loan-words coming from English and the west, that is, the gairaigo 外来語, which are noticeably written with katakana instead of kanji or hiragana, as they go through katakanization. You can memorize the alphabet in just a couple of weeks! Subaru, typically pronounced “ soo -ba-roo,” in English, is pronounced “ su -ba-ru,” in Japan. Pre-World War II official documents mix katakana and kanji in the same way that hiragana and kanji are mixed in modern Japanese texts, that is, katakana were used for okurigana and particles such as wa or o. Katakana was also used for telegrams in Japan before 1988, and for computer systems – before the introduction of multibyte characters – in the 1980s. Ainu also uses three handakuten modified katakana, セ゚ ([tse]), and ツ゚ or ト゚ ([tu̜]). -1 Japanese call cellphones Kei Tai Denwa (literally portable phone) but they don't use the kanji for keitai 携帯, they don't use the hiragana, けいたい, they use katakana ケータイ, which uses a hyphen when clearly it should use ケイタイ. The major difference between hiragana and katakana is the fact that hiragana is primarily used to represent Japanese words, while katakana represents foreign words. Katakana is sometimes used instead of hiragana as furigana to give the pronunciation of a word written in Roman characters, or for a foreign word, which is written as kanji for the meaning, but intended to be pronounced as the original. The other script, katakana, is used for example to indicate loan words from languages like English, the names of animals and plants, for some company names, such as Suzuki, and for emphasis. "increase", but the original meaning is no longer applicable to kana). Some frequently used words may also be written in katakana in dialogs to convey an informal, conversational tone. “Katakana.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/katakana. Information and translations of katakana in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on the web. This space is narrower than the square space traditionally occupied by Japanese characters, hence the name "half-width". Half-width equivalents to the usual full-width katakana also exist in Unicode. Each kana represents either a vowel such as "a" (katakana ア); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka" (katakana カ); or "n" (katakana ン), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n or ng ([ŋ]) or like the nasal vowels of Portuguese or Galician. Their application is strictly limited in proper writing systems,[clarification needed] but may be more extensive in academic transcriptions. Katakana 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). [10], Early on, katakana was almost exclusively used by men for official text and text imported from China.[11]. Grey background  indicates obsolete characters. Katakana are commonly used on signs, advertisements, and hoardings (i.e., billboards), for example, ココ koko ("here"), ゴミ gomi ("trash"), or メガネ megane ("glasses"). Small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds (ハァ haa, ネェ nee), but in katakana they are more often used in yōon-like extended digraphs designed to represent phonemes not present in Japanese; examples include チェ (che) in チェンジ chenji ("change"), ファ (fa) in ファミリー famirī ("family") and ウィ (wi) and ディ (di) in ウィキペディア Wikipedia. For example, メール mēru is the gairaigo for e-mail taken from the English word "mail"; the ー lengthens the e. There are some exceptions, such as ローソク (rōsoku (蝋燭, "candle")) or ケータイ(kētai (携帯, "mobile phone")), where Japanese words written in katakana use the elongation mark, too. The numbers and arrows indicate the stroke order and direction, respectively. This gives students a chance to practice reading and writing kana with meaningful words. Katakana is used as a phonetic guide for the Okinawan language, unlike the various other systems to represent Okinawan, which use hiragana with extensions. Hiragana is the composing style that is utilized in the Japanese publications. A dot below the initial kana represents aspirated consonants, and チ, ツ, サ, セ, ソ, ウ and オ with a superpositional bar represent sounds found only in Taiwanese. Katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin script. In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; for example, compare サカ saka "hill" with サッカ sakka "author". The "small" kana, often called chiisai kana 小さいかな, are smaller versions of normal-sized kana, for example: aa あぁ. The script includes two diacritic marks placed at the upper right of the base character that change the initial sound of a syllabogram. It just makes it look cool and international to use it like that. These characters are used for the Ainu language only. Characters shi シ and tsu ツ, and so ソ and n(g) ン, look very similar in print except for the slant and stroke shape. These differences in slant and shape are more prominent when written with an ink brush. Circled katakana are code points U+32D0–U+32FE in the Enclosed CJK Letters and Months block (U+3200–U+32FF). Katakana is used to indicate the on'yomi (Chinese-derived readings) of a kanji in a kanji dictionary. Encoded in this block along with the katakana are the nakaguro word-separation middle dot, the chōon vowel extender, the katakana iteration marks, and a ligature of コト sometimes used in vertical writing. Katakana are characterized by short, straight strokes and sharp corners. By contrast, ISO-2022-JP has no half-width katakana, and is mainly used over SMTP and NNTP. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems. Learn Hiragana & Katakana with an Online Quiz. The best thing about reading in Japanese is that hiragana and katakana are phonetic, meaning they’re always read the same. Japanese has two forms of phonetic (sound-based) writing, hiragana and katakana.In modern Japanese, most writing is done in a mixture of hiragana and kanji (Chinese characters). [14], In addition to fonts intended for Japanese text and Unicode catch-all fonts (like Arial Unicode MS), many fonts intended for Chinese (such as MS Song) and Korean (such as Batang) also include katakana. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Katakana was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0. These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'katakana.' The full-width versions of these characters are found in the Hiragana block. What made you want to look up katakana? Katakana (片仮名、カタカナ, Japanese pronunciation: [katakaꜜna][note 1]) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana,[2] kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). You can memorize the alphabet in just a couple of weeks! Katakana 片仮名 is a syllabary with each character representing a syllable (not a letter) and each character has no meaning. The 50-sound table is often amended with an extra character, the nasal ン (n). Although often said to be obsolete, the half-width katakana are still used in many systems and encodings. Japanese has two forms of phonetic (sound-based) writing, hiragana and katakana.In modern Japanese, most writing is done in a mixture of hiragana and kanji (Chinese characters). Each katakana character is a simplified form or a part of a kanji (Chinese) character. An example of this is コーヒー kōhī, ("coffee"), which can alternatively be written as 珈琲. In Unicode, the Katakana Phonetic Extensions block (U+31F0–U+31FF) exists for Ainu language support. Fun fact: because the Japanese Kanji characters still look a bit similar to the Chinese characters, a person that understands Chinese could probably get the gist of a message in Japanese kanji. [8] Other instructors introduce katakana first, because these are used with loanwords. In English we use the letters of the alphabet. The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components of more complex kanji. It is a Japanese syllabary alphabet used to spell out foreign, now mostly English words. Unlike Japanese or Ainu, Taiwanese kana are used similarly to the Zhùyīn fúhào characters, with kana serving as initials, vowel medials and consonant finals, marked with tonal marks. It’s also used for emphasis, and onomatopoeia. nihon-siki チ ti, or they apply some Western graphotactics, usually the English one, to the common Japanese pronunciation of the kana signs, e.g. This block also includes the half-width dakuten and handakuten. Test your knowledge - and maybe learn something along the way. This is a table of katakana together with their Hepburn romanization and rough IPA transcription for their use in Japanese. It may also be appended to the vowel row or the a column. While the English name is derived from the katakana spelling, the actual kanji spelling for Subaru, 昴, refers to the Seven Sisters, or the Pleiades, star cluster. This can appear in several positions, most often next to the N signs or, because it developed from one of many mu hentaigana, below the u column. When originally devised, the half-width katakana were represented by a single byte each, as in JIS X 0201, again in line with the capabilities of contemporary computer technology. Katakana are also used for onomatopoeia,[3] words used to represent sounds – for example, ピンポン (pinpon), the "ding-dong" sound of a doorbell. Katakana, meaning “fragmentary kana,” are used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords and onomatopoeia. Like Japanese? However, in foreign loanwords, katakana instead uses a vowel extender mark, called a chōonpu ("long vowel mark"). [6] Katakana is also used to denote the fact that a character is speaking a foreign language, and what is displayed in katakana is only the Japanese "translation" of his or her words. Meaning of katakana. This kanji usage is occasionally employed by coffee manufacturers or coffee shops for novelty. This English-to-katakana converter is based on these rules for conversion. The half-width forms were originally associated with the JIS X 0201 encoding. Delivered to your inbox! Period. You can memorize the alphabet in just a couple of weeks! The very common Chinese loanword rāmen, written in katakana as ラーメン, is rarely written with its kanji (拉麺). In Japanese, katakana-go カタカナ語 (also katakanago), and sometimes katakana kotoba カタカナ言葉, "katakana words," refers to loan-words coming from English and the west, that is, the gairaigo 外来語, which are noticeably written with katakana instead of kanji or hiragana, as they go through katakanization. Extensions to Katakana for phonetic transcription of Ainu and other languages were added to the Unicode standard in March 2002 with the release of version 3.2. Katakana is a Japanese script used for writing words borrowed from other languages. Most computers of that era used katakana instead of kanji or hiragana for output. Diacritics, though used for over a thousand years, only became mandatory in the Japanese writing system in the second half of the 20th century. This is represented in rōmaji by doubling the consonant that follows the sokuon. It is also occasionally used … For example, in the word 皮膚科 hifuka ("dermatology"), the second kanji, 膚, is considered difficult to read, and thus the word hifuka is commonly written 皮フ科 or ヒフ科, mixing kanji and katakana. A character called a sokuon, which is visually identical to a small tsu ッ, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). For instance, the first rule the system learns is to replace the letter "L" with the letter "R", because there is no "L" in Japanese. Updated with more commonly confused words! WRITTEN JAPANESE HIRAGANA KATAKANA KANGJI AND CELL – Katakana Meaning An additional point that is extremely essential is the truth that the Katakana chart has different designs, or hiragana. In this scheme, diacritics (dakuten and handakuten) are separate characters. Think your Japanese name sounds strange? Useful for those that arrived already knowi... NihongoMaster Vocabulary Alexandra. However, it cannot be used to double the na, ni, nu, ne, no syllables' consonants; to double these, the singular n (ン) is added in front of the syllable. Geminated consonants are common in transliterations of foreign loanwords; for example, English "bed" is represented as ベッド (beddo). Taiwanese kana (タイ ヲァヌ ギイ カア ビェン) is a katakana-based writing system once used to write Holo Taiwanese, when Taiwan was under Japanese control. Learn a new word every day. Katakana and hiragana are both syllabaries. There are rare instances where the opposite has occurred, with kanji forms created from words originally written in katakana. Your input looks like it might be romanized Japanese 「 default 」. Regular Japanese names like Matsumoto will be spelled with Kanji, but when you have a foreign name like Emily, that is spelled with Katakana. Unlike the hiragana system, used for Japanese language words that kanji does not cover, the katakana syllabary is used primarily for transcription of foreign language words into Japanese and the writing of loan words (collectively gairaigo), as well as to represent onomatopoeias, technical and scientific terms, and the names of plants, animals, and minerals. Definition of katakana : the form of Japanese syllabic writing used especially for scientific terms, official documents, and words adopted from other languages — compare hiragana Examples of katakana in a Sentence Recent Examples on the Web Mē-mē Bēkari, says the katakana script above, which means the creature must be a sheep. 25) © Based on JMdict , KANJIDIC2 , and JMnedict , property of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group , used in conformance with the Group's licence . Technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animal and plant species and minerals, are also commonly written in katakana. The katakana is the second of the Japanese character sets that we will learn. Some examples include マンガ ("manga"), アイツ aitsu ("that guy or girl; he/him; her"), バカ baka ("fool"), etc. Like Japanese? He claims that his findings suggest the possibility that the katakana-like annotations used in reading guide marks (乎古止点 / ヲコト点, okototen) possibly originated in 8th-century Korea – Silla – and then been introduced to Japan through Buddhist texts. Katakana is used typically for non Japanese words. In addition to the usual full-width (全角, zenkaku) display forms of characters, katakana has a second form, half-width (半角, hankaku) (there are no kanji). kanji meaning Japanese Kanji Elements Set Vector Free Download – Read katakana, hiragana, and kanji chart and other learning stuff without worries. Hepburn-shiki チ chi. The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components of more complex kanji. Think your Japanese name sounds strange? See more. Secondary alteration, where possible, is shown by a circular handakuten: h→p; For example; ハ (ha) becomes パ (pa). Japanese “Service Charge” Button was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 under the name “Squared Katakana Sa” and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Subaru, typically pronounced “ soo -ba-roo,” in English, is pronounced “ su -ba-ru,” in Japan. Kanji themselves express a meaning and are used in conjunction with hiragana and katakana. Common examples include non Japanese names as well as words taken from other languages and pronounced with the Japanese syllables. Essentially, given a list of English/Japanese name pairs, the system learns a series of substitution rules to apply to the English input in order to get the Japanese output. 'Nip it in the butt' or 'Nip it in the bud'. Similarly, difficult-to-read kanji such as 癌 gan ("cancer") are often written in katakana or hiragana. Words with difficult-to-read kanji are sometimes written in katakana (hiragana is also used for this purpose). The sokuon also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop. kanji meaning Kanji Chart For 1st Grade Of Elementary School Students In – Learn katakana, hiragana, and kanji chart and other japanese language without worries. For example, the titles of mini discs can only be entered in ASCII or half-width katakana, and half-width katakana are commonly used in computerized cash register displays, on shop receipts, and Japanese digital television and DVD subtitles. Standard and voiced iteration marks are written in katakana as ヽ and ヾ, respectively. What does katakana mean? It's easy! See How to Translate Your Name to Japanese for why it became this way. To convert romaji to kana, see this page . In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for Japanese words not covered by kanji and for grammatical inflections, 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. Translation for 'katakana' in the free English-Japanese dictionary and many other Japanese translations. For example, in a manga, the speech of a foreign character or a robot may be represented by コンニチワ konnichiwa ("hello") instead of the more typical hiragana こんにちは. Their display forms were designed to fit into an approximately square array of pixels, hence the name "full-width". The adjacent table shows the origins of each katakana: the red markings of the original Chinese character (used as man'yōgana) eventually became each corresponding symbol.