Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A relatively angular kana used for writing foreign words or official documents, such as telegrams.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. One of the two styles of writing the syllabary of 48 letters in use among the Japanese, the other being hiragana. The katakana letters are said to have been invented by Kibi Daishi, about the middle of the eighth century, are formed of a part— one side —of square Chinese characters used phonetically, and are confined almost exclusively to the writing of proper names and foreign words. In katakana there is but one form for each letter, whereas in hiragana many of the letters may be written in a variety of ways.
Wiktionary
- n. uncountable A Japanese syllabary used when writing words borrowed from foreign languages other than Chinese, specific names of plants and animals and other jargon, or to emphasize a word or phrase.
- n. A letter thereof
Etymologies
- From Japanese 片仮名 (katakana). (Wiktionary)
- Japanese : kata, one + kana, kana; see kana. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“After several events, I try to write it down in katakana, the phonetic syllables used for rendering foreign words.”
“But katakana is mostly limited to sounds in the Japanese language, which is notoriously limited.”
“Although the western word “Terrorist” appeared in katakana in his poem, he was an apolitical poet, who was isolated, anti-social and prone to unhealthy dose of introspection and self-loathing.”
Miyazawa Kenji – Ishikawa Takuboku – Two Japanese poets from Iwate
“Jackson seems intrigued by Japanese culture, as he had a Japanese reporter pen his name for him in katakana, or”
“The two characters left of her says "BoA" in Japanese katakana, "ボア" … But of course, you're probably right PopSeoul, Americans who are not aware of the Japanese language will probably see that and just see it as some Asian writing (most likely Chinese).”
“One of the VMUs has the godzilla mini game on it and works fine, the other one has an error message saying “There is no game” in katakana.”
“He goes on to explain (or claim) that this was one of his first ideas for writing about cold-reading (a term the katakana version of which, incidentally, Ishii appears to have trademarked), rejected by the publisher for being too “provocative,” but that he has decided to revive the idea in the hopes that it will help shock Japan out of its ongoing susceptibility to fraudulent spiritualists and ore ore scams.”
Néojaponisme » Blog Archive » Confessions of a pseudo-pseudo-psychic
“What's funny is that it's written in katakana, which is a script that even people who can't read Japanese well usually learn quite decently because it is usually used for foreign non-Japanese words, and people learn at least how to write their names with it.”
“They don't have the main character in the cast, and Zambot has been written with a "sa" in katakana, which is wrong...”
“She wrote names in katakana, which is the Japanese way of writing foreign words and phrases.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘katakana’.
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Realia from Everywhere
Culturally defined terms and expressions from the four corners of the world
fjord, mistral steppe, tornado, tsunami, polder, kiwi, koala, sequoia, Abominable Snowman, paprika, spaghetti, empanada and 299 more...
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Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
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Land of the Rising Sun
The culture, the words, the idiosyncracies of Japan.
salaryman, r�?maji, ronin, kanji, hiragana, katakana, kabuki, karaoke, itadakimasu, gaiden, sumi-e, bushido and 39 more...
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writing
words associated with writing and writing systems
bokmål, hangul, kana, circumflex, diacritic, umlaut, tréma, hanzi, hiragana, kanji, katakana, pinyin and 5 more...
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Wonders of the word
optic to coptic
alphabit, betamaximum, glammar, iota jot set, deltidium, kappale, chicane, chide, inusitate, pazend, abjad, Pinyin and 20 more...
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Japan
Words associated with Japan or japanese.
kanji, kana, hiragana, katakana, harakiri, sudoku, pillow book, heian, lady-in-waiting, sakura, doll festival, nori and 22 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for katakana.
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