Basically, there are three kinds of characters in Japanese, they are hiragana, katakana and kanji. Romaji are sometimes used too.
Here below is the package of a box of apple-flavored candies, I bought this when I travelled to Sendai last summer holiday. From the package, three kinds of characters in Japanese can be seen, as well as the romaji.
hiragana: りんご
katakana: フル
kanji: 青森県産
romaji: RINGO (referring to “apple”)
In our everyday life, we can see Japanese all the time, for instance like the packages of the food products and electrical appliances that made in Japan. But then, it is quite interesting that sometimes hiragana are used, and sometimes katakana are used. The followings are some of the special uses of katakana:
1) Onomatopoeia:
I like reading comic books. Before time, I have never noticed that katakana are used to represent sound, but now I realize that katakana can use for transcribing onomatopoeic words, and they do appear in different comic books that I have read!
Fullmetal Alchemist (鋼の錬金術師) is my favourite comic books, and it is my first comic book ever! In the above captured image from one episode of “Fullmetal Alchemist”, we can see that katakana is used to represent different sounds. It is very easy to know thatゴトンゴトンis used to represent the sound made by the shoes when someone is walking.
The above is another image captured from another episode of Fullmetal Alchemist. Here the katakanaドカン is used to represent the booming sound in an explosion.
2) Katakana can also be used to transcribe foreign loanwords. Here are some
examples:
これはクッキ(cookies)です。
これはチーズケーキ(cheese cake)です。
I have also found that for some foreign loanwords written in katakana, they are modified in some ways that they are no longer pronounced like English!
Below are some examples:
ここはコンビニ(Convenience store)です。
ここはデパート (Department store)です。
ここはスーパー(Supermarket)です。
sources: google image searching tool and self scanning pictures
