DecksHow to Learn Katakana (After Hiragana)
Learn katakana after hiragana. Every katakana character has a hiragana twin with the same sound, so once you know hiragana, katakana is a second set of shapes for sounds you already have. A flashcard that shows the katakana and asks for the hiragana reading makes that link directly.
What's in a full katakana set
The basic chart has 46 characters, like hiragana. A complete set adds the voiced forms (ガ ga, ザ za, ダ da, バ ba), the p-sounds (パ pa) and the combined sounds (キャ kya, シュ shu, チョ cho). The katakana chart lists all 104 cards in the Japanese Katakana deck.
The look-alikes
A few pairs cause most of the mistakes:
| Pair | Readings | How to tell |
|---|---|---|
| シ / ツ | shi / tsu | シ's strokes rise from the lower left; ツ's fall from the top |
| ソ / ン | so / n | ソ's short stroke is near-vertical; ン's is near-flat |
| ク / タ | ku / ta | タ has an extra short stroke inside |
| ワ / ウ | wa / u | ウ has a short stroke on top |
When you miss one of these, rate it Again so it comes back within minutes. A few rounds of that fixes most confusion.
Practise on loanwords
Katakana is used mostly for borrowed words, so sounding words out is good practice and often reveals the English underneath: テレビ (terebi, TV), コーヒー (kōhī, coffee), パン (pan, bread, from Portuguese). The long-vowel mark ー stretches the vowel before it.
Published 2026-10-07.