Katakana Practice: 20 Loanwords That Show What Slows You

Katakana words can still be slow to read after every character on the chart looks familiar. This katakana practice uses 20 loanwords, words taken from other languages, to show which kind of miss slows you.

Before ordering, you may need to ask for the menu:

すみません、メニューを見せてください。すみません、メニューをみせてください。 (sumimasen,menyuuwomisetekudasai.)

Excuse me, please show me the menu.

For anyone who reads each katakana alone but is slow with whole words, these 20 loanwords test the words themselves. Until you read hiragana and each katakana without help, the field notes on hiragana practice and learning katakana come first.

Before question 1, make sure “Romaji” is off in “Reading aids,” since it shows each katakana word's reading. Leave the underlined words untapped, because a tap opens their meaning.

A beat is one unit of timing in Japanese, and each full-size kana is one. The long bar ー, which lengthens the vowel before it, is one too. So is small tsu, the small ッ () that adds a pause before a consonant.

Small ャ (ya), ュ (yu), and ョ (yo) share the beat of the kana before them. Read each word aloud, beat by beat, then give its meaning in English.

These are questions 1 to 10:

1 ネクタイ (nekutai), 2 スリッパ (surippa), 3 シャーペン (shaapen), 4 ドーナツ (doonatsu), 5 キャベツ (kyabetsu)

6 パート (paato), 7 ハンバーガー (hanbaagaa), 8 ショッピング (shoppingu), 9 インフルエンザ (infuruenza), 10 トレーナー (toreenaa)

Each word gets a mark for its sound and one for its meaning. The sound is right when your beats match the answer in any romaji, so a lost or added beat is a miss. The meaning is right when it names the same thing as the English answer, the meaning this test asks for.

An answer given with “Romaji” on, or after tapping the word, does not count, so redo it. Speed is not marked.

In the second part of this katakana quiz, you start from English. Write each of the next 10 words in katakana, on paper or by typing.

A spelling is right only when every kana matches the answer, including each ー, small tsu, and small kana. Handwriting quality does not count.

These English words are questions 11 to 20:

11 skirt, 12 tomato, 13 pocket, 14 cheese, 15 jacket

16 Egypt, 17 curry, 18 shampoo, 19 ketchup, 20 ice cream

Compare each answer with the table and mark each miss next to its number.

Each set of letters in “Beats in romaji” is one beat. A long bar appears as its vowel again, and small tsu as the next consonant. For 9, “influenza” is right too, since it names the same illness.

Give each miss one kind, and a word with two misses gets two. Each kind has one place to practice. This test defines its four kinds itself, so a textbook or the JLPT may sort mistakes another way.

A look-alike miss is シ (shi) for ツ (tsu), ソ (so) for ン (n), or the reverse, in either part. Practice it in the section on these four in the field note on learning katakana. No single row has both kana of a pair.

A sound miss is any other wrong sound in questions 1 to 10. Practice it on the Kana page of Ukiyoe Japanese, in the row for that sound among the 19 under “Katakana.” An unreadable ネ (ne), for example, goes to the na-row.

A sound miss with ー or small tsu, including small tsu read at full size, goes to the last row. That row, “small ッ () & long mark {{ー},” uses other kana. Reading small ャ (ya), ュ (yu), or ョ (yo) at full size points to the kya-row.

A meaning miss is a wrong or missing meaning in questions 1 to 10. A spelling miss is any miss in questions 11 to 20 that is not a look-alike. Both go to the drill “Katakana loanwords” in Skill Drills.

With two or more kinds, practice in every place, in this order: look-alikes, rows, then the drill. Each place needs what the one before it practices. With no misses, go to the drill, since its 30 words are not in this test.

Picture three misses: “a pen” for 3, “do na tsu” for 4, and ケチャプ (kechapu) written for 19. The second loses a long bar, a sound miss for the last row. The first and third are meaning and spelling misses, so the drill comes after the last row.

In Skill Drills, the drill “Katakana loanwords” asks 30 four-choice questions, shuffled on each run, about words this test does not use. Twelve ask for a spelling, with choices that add or drop ー or small tsu, and the other 18 ask for a meaning.

For anyone without an account, drill questions count toward a daily limit of 10, so the 30 cannot all be done in one day. Rows in the “Katakana” tab are outside that limit.

A row takes typed readings in Hepburn spelling only, so it counts “tu” for ツ (tsu) as an error, unlike this test.

シ (shi) and ツ (tsu) never share one question's choices in the “Katakana” tab, and neither do ソ (so) and ン (n). The last row works on ー and small tsu through 10 pairs of its own, from ッカ (kka) to メー (mee). Some pairs in this test, such as ッパ (ppa) in スリッパ (surippa), are not among them.

Take these 20 words again after you have practiced in each place your misses named. With the answers out of view and “Romaji” off, read and write them as before. A miss that returns keeps its kind and its place.

Each miss gets one kind, and each kind has one place: a field note section, a row, or the drill.

Several kinds mean every place, with look-alikes first, rows second, and the drill last.

With every answer right, the drill comes next, since none of its 30 words is in this test.

Yes. Once a loanword is in Japanese, it is a Japanese word, with a meaning and uses of its own. Its spelling and its beats are part of the word too, which is why this test has you write 10 of them.

Some also carry a meaning the English word lacks, as トレーナー (toreenaa) and パート (paato) do in this test. To choose which words to learn first, the field note on the most common Japanese words starts from a newspaper count.

Menus and store shelves are two everyday places full of them. The field note on learning katakana names more. Read each word you find in beats, as you did here, before you learn its meaning.

If you cannot read a kana and it belongs to one of the 19 rows, practice that row. A word you read correctly but do not know is a meaning miss, the kind the drill practices.

The English spelling does not decide it. In this test, スカート (sukaato) has a long bar and トマト (tomato) has none, so learn each word with its beats. When you write a new word, say it in beats first and give each ー its own beat.

For the usual patterns, read two sections of the field note on learning katakana: the long vowel mark, and how English words become katakana. Those patterns are tendencies, so some words do not follow them.