Welcome to Lesson Five 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. Each word contains exclusively characters that have been introduced in previous lessons. Accordingly, if you read the post series in order, you should be able to read each word you encounter.

This post presumes knowledge of the characters introduced in previous lessons of the Reading Japanese: Katakana series; each post defines only words that are appearing for the first time in the series.

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The characters we’ve learned so far

Here are the kana characters we have studied so far; read them aloud, and if you need more practice with any of them, review the previous lessons:

ア イ ウ エ オ ー ン ル ス ズ ト ド ラ フ ブ プ ク グ リ レ ツ ッ タ ダ コ ゴ

Eight more katakana syllables

Today we will meet the following eight new characters:

シ ジ ホ ボ ポ マ ヒ ビ ピ

シ | shi (“shee” as in “sushi”)

ジ | ji (“jee” as in “jeer”)

ホ | ho (“hoh” as in “hole”)

ボ | bo (“boh” as in “bowl”)

ポ | po (“poh” as in “post”)

マ | ma (“mah” as in “mama”)

ヒ | hi (“hee” as in “here”)

ビ | bi (“bee”)

ピ | pi (“pee” as in “peer”)