“Yen,” “Jesus,” “wars,” and more: your next katakana words
Welcome to Lesson Two of WordBrewery’s Reading Japanese: Katakana series. We have created a frequency list of Japanese words, then mined that list for the most common katakana words. If you already read katakana, you can still learn from the vocabulary in this post series. But if you’re new to katakana, these posts will help you learn to read it quickly and accurately while picking up some useful vocabulary along the way.
This post presumes knowledge of the five vowel characters introduced in Lesson One, so be sure to review that if you need to.
The five most frequent katakana syllables
Recall from Lesson One that Japanese has only five vowel sounds, and the sound of these vowels never changes. Most Japanese syllables consist of one consonant paired with one of these five vowel sounds. Except for “n” (as in ra-me-n, the noodle dish, Ho-n-da, the automaker, or Ni-n-te-n-do, the video game maker) and one other case we will see later, Japanese has no standalone consonants. Often, when an English word is adopted in Japanese, a vowel sound (often ウ (“u”)) is added to these standalone consonants.
You learned the five vowel symbols in Lesson 1; now you will learn the five most common Japanese katakana. After this lesson, you’ll already know almost 25% of the katakana script.
ン
n (“n” as in “none”—but a standalone syllable).
エン
Yen
オン
on
イオン
eon
ウィン
win
ウン
very common sound indicating agreement (can be extended to ウンウン)
オンエア
on-air
アイアン
iron (golf club)
ウィーン
win
ル
ru (“ru/lu”; to pronounce the Japanese “r”, try this: say “Eddie” fast (but without putting any stress on “Ed,” because Japanese doesn’t stress syllables like English does). That is the same sound as the Japanese word eri, meaning “ring.”)
ルール
rule
オール
all-nighter, oar
オイル
oil
エール
yell, ale
ウォール
wall
アイル
aisle
ス
su (“soo” as in “sushi”)
スイス
Swiss
ウイルス
virus
エース
ace
イエス
Jesus
スー
Sioux
アイス
ice, iced
スルー
“through”: going through, looking past, ignoring
アース
Earth
ズ
zu (“zu” as in “Zulu”)
ウォーズ
wars (as in “Star Wars”)
エイズ
AIDS
ウェールズ
Wales
ト
to (“toe” as in “tofu”)
トン
ton
ルート
route
スト
strike (workers’ strike)
アウト
out (baseball)
アート
art
ストア
store
ウエスト
waste, waist, west
オート
auto
イースト
east
トーン
tone
アルト
alto
ド
do (“doe”)
ドル
dollar
インド
Indonesia
ドア
door
アンド
and
アイドル
idol
ウィンドウ
window
エンド
end
オールド
old
アド
ad
ドンドン
knock knock
アウトドア
outdoor
Keep reading and writing these words again and again until you can recognize these first ten syllables immediately and read them as quickly as you can read English. Keep practicing, and soon you will be ready to learn Japanese by reading real sentences from the news.
Practice by reading these aloud over and over again