Katakana Chart: All 46 Characters, Their Sounds, and When to Use Them

The katakana chart: all 46 basic characters

Here's the full katakana chart. Each row gives you the character, its rōmaji (romanization), a plain-English sound hint, and a real loanword so the sound sticks. Read across: the character, how you'd spell it in the alphabet you know, what it sounds like, and a word you might already recognize.

Japanese leaves no spaces between words, so these examples are written in katakana exactly as you'd meet them on a menu or sign. The rōmaji and Japanese characters stay identical in every language.

That grid is the gojūon, or '50 sounds', the traditional ordering. A few old slots dropped out over the years, which leaves 46 characters in daily use. Notice the four classic traps right away: シ is shi (not 'si'), チ is chi (not 'ti'), ツ is tsu (not 'tu'), and フ is fu, that soft f-meets-h sound. Get those four and you're already ahead of most beginners.

The katakana chart: voiced sounds (dakuten and handakuten)

Add two little strokes (dakuten, nicknamed 'ten-ten') to the top-right of a character and its consonant softens into a voiced sound. K turns into G, S into Z, T into D, and H into B. Add a small circle instead (handakuten, or 'maru') to the H row and it becomes P. Same shapes you just learned, one small mark on top.

Two pairs land on the same sound: ジ and ヂ are both 'ji', and ズ and ヅ are both 'zu'. In modern Japanese you'll see ジ and ズ almost every time, while ヂ and ヅ are rare leftovers.

That's every voiced sound Japanese needs. Because the base shape never changes, you're really learning one mark, not 25 new characters.

Katakana combos (yōon): the small ャ, ュ, ョ

Take one of the -i characters (キ, シ, チ, ニ, ヒ, ミ, リ, ギ, ジ, ビ, ピ) and add a small ャ, ュ, or ョ, and the two squeeze into a single beat. キ (ki) plus a small ャ makes キャ (kya), one sound, not 'ki-ya'. The little ya, yu, and yo are written at about half size. These blends are called yōon, and loanwords lean on them constantly.

The same move builds every combo across those rows, so once you can read キャ you can read them all. The small kana also spell newer foreign sounds that older katakana couldn't, which is how Japanese writes words like 'chef' and 'violin':

Hiragana vs katakana: what's the difference?

Hiragana and katakana are the two halves of Japanese kana. They map to the exact same 46 sounds, so カ and か are both 'ka'. The difference is the job each one does, not the sound. Kanji, the third script, is a separate set of characters borrowed from Chinese that carry meaning rather than a single sound.

Here's the split a beginner needs:

• Hiragana (curvy) handles native Japanese: grammar particles, verb endings, and words with no kanji. It's the round, flowing script.
• Katakana (angular) handles anything imported or highlighted. Its sharp corners come from fragments of kanji, which is why it looks stiff next to hiragana.

So when do you actually reach for katakana? Five main times:

1. Loanwords (gairaigo): words borrowed from other languages, like コーヒー (kōhī, coffee) and テレビ (terebi, TV). This is the biggest use by far.
2. Foreign names and places: your name, other countries, and world cities, such as アメリカ (Amerika, America) and マイク (Maiku, Mike).
3. Onomatopoeia: sound effects, especially in manga, like ワンワン (wanwan, a dog's woof) and ドキドキ (dokidoki, a pounding heart).
4. Scientific and casual animal or plant names: ネコ (neko, cat) and イヌ (inu, dog) often show up in katakana on packaging and in biology.
5. Emphasis: katakana works like italics or ALL CAPS, making a word pop in ads and menus.

A quick gut check: if a word sounds foreign or looks 'loud' on the page, it's probably katakana. If it's the glue holding a sentence together, it's hiragana. A full hiragana lesson is coming next, and for now, just spotting which script a word uses already tells you a lot about it. Japanese also ranks among the hardest languages to learn for English speakers, and juggling three scripts at once is a big reason why.

Long vowels (ー) and the small tsu (ッ)

Katakana has two tiny marks that change how long a sound lasts, and both catch beginners out. Get comfortable with them and your reading speeds up right away.

The long-vowel bar ー (chōonpu). A single straight line stretches the vowel before it for one extra beat. コーヒー reads ko-o-hi-i (kōhī, coffee), not 'kohi'. This bar is katakana's signature move, since hiragana usually repeats the vowel letter instead. The length carries meaning, so ビル (biru) means 'building' while ビール (bīru) means 'beer'. In vertical writing the bar simply turns to stand upright.

The small tsu ッ (sokuon). A half-size ツ tucked between two characters doesn't say 'tsu' at all. It doubles the next consonant and adds a tiny stop, like the catch in 'uh-oh'. So ベッド is be-(stop)-do (beddo, bed), コップ is ko-(stop)-pu (koppu, cup), and サッカー is sa-(stop)-kā (sakkā, soccer). Look for a ツ that sits smaller and lower than its neighbors, then hold the next sound.

The small ャ, ュ, ョ from the combos section follow the same 'smaller means change the sound' logic. Size is doing real work in katakana, so train your eye to notice when a kana shrinks.

Look-alike katakana: シ vs ツ and ン vs ソ

Four characters cause more beginner mix-ups than all the others combined: シ (shi), ツ (tsu), ン (n), and ソ (so). They're built from the same two dashes and one long stroke, so the fix is to read the angle and the writing direction, not the parts.

Here's the stroke-direction trick that sorts them instantly:

• シ (shi) and ン (n) are drawn from the bottom upward, and their little dashes lie almost flat, side by side. Picture them looking up and smiling.
• ツ (tsu) and ソ (so) are drawn from the top downward, and their dashes stand almost upright, pointing down. Picture them looking down.

Now count the short strokes within each pair. シ and ツ have two dashes, while ン and ソ have one. Two dashes going up is シ (shi); two dashes going down is ツ (tsu). One dash going up is ン (n); one dash going down is ソ (so). Say 'shi and n go up, tsu and so go down' a few times and it locks in for good.

A couple of other near-twins are worth grouping too: ク (ku), ワ (wa), and ケ (ke), plus ウ (u), フ (fu), and ワ (wa). If you've cracked another new script before, like the Hebrew alphabet, you already know the cure: study look-alikes in pairs, never alone, so your eye learns the contrast.

Quick mnemonics to make katakana stick

A handful of shape hooks turn scary characters into old friends. Here are a few that learners swear by:

• ニ (ni) is two flat lines, and the kanji for two, 二, is also read 'ni'. Two lines, 'ni'.
• ミ (mi) is three quick strokes, and 'mi' turns up in the native word for three, みっつ (mittsu).
• キ (ki) looks like the kanji 木 (ki), a tree. Picture a key hanging on a tree: 'ki'.
• ロ (ro) is a plain square, like a room or a bread roll. A box for 'ro'.
• ヨ (yo) looks like a capital E turned around, three shelves. 'Yo, stack it on the shelves.'
• メ (me) is a sharp X, like two swords crossing. Aim for 'me'.

Build your own hooks for the rest; the sillier the picture, the faster it sticks.

A 10-minute practice plan. Print this katakana chart or keep it open on your phone. Spend five minutes reading the example words out loud, then cover the rōmaji column and name each character from the katakana alone. After that, walk around and read every katakana sign, label, and menu you can find, because loanwords are everywhere once you start looking. To plan the vocabulary that comes after the script, see how many words you need to be fluent, and the Japanese hub lines up your next lessons.