tl;dr: Do you have a not too large set of words containing all katakana?
Bonus points for typical usages and “important” or frequent words.
More bonus points for words that emphasize the learning of particular kanas instead of having as many different kanas possible in them*.
Reason is, I want to re-insert katakana into my SRS but I would prefer doing it through KameSame instead of reinstalling and relearning Anki, and kamesame only accepts vocabulary words or kanji. I’m asking here because while I’m sure I could make something like this myself, it sounds like a common concept and people might have very well-made lists already.
*For example, the word アメリカ is fine to refresh kanas but if you really want to learn ア you would probably need a word that also contains a マ so you can come face to face with the similarity. Otherwise the word itself gives the ア away without you making a strong effort to recognize it. I’m also thinking smaller words are stronger for this purpose for the same reason. A bigger word has more hints to let you (unconsciously) bypass some characters. Your eyes will instantly produce the meaning without you having to recognize all the individual characters…
EDIT: And yeah i realize how sad it is to make this post 1.5 years into it lol
the most confusing katakana to me are the ones not based on english words because i have to first parse out the sound then figure out what the heck it’s going on about as far as meaning.
Even the ones based on english words can get confusing sometimes because they sound a bit different and youre never sure if you should try out the english word with some japanizations or if its just a japanese word written in katakana for emphasis.
Then you have the Four Horsemen of Shit (tsu shi so n) and all the weird stuff that seems to happen in Katakana…
I’ll just say, it won’t get better without practice. It clearly hasn’t for me, at least.
You could reinsert them through the custom srs userscript I made :^) would fit perfectly as a wk vocab card.
Btw, quick edit, there are anki decks with like the top 1000 or so katakana words, might be useful, probably waaay less effort than a 1000 regular words
Kinda think you need the opposite - you need to be able to tell them apart when you don’t have them both there to compare, after all. Maybe what you need is two words that are similar except that one uses ア and the other uses マ. Like… アリ (ant) and マリ (Mali, the African nation). Though if do want a word that uses both, マリア? You can also toss in アリア if you still want to lay a trap for yourself.
Well, to be fair, that is, ideally, the end goal.
Honestly not too sure how you’d curate such a list like that. Here, for example, is all the katakana vocab one might expect to find in the JLPT N5 exam, and it certainly doesn’t have every katakana - there’s no ソ, for example (or ヌ, but I really don’t think you’re going to encounter that one outside of タヌキ or ヌードル), though it does have シャツ, which is good for simultaneous exposure to シ and ツ.
Sure, but for all words. You know how even in english, your brain doesn’t even read all the letters of a word? If you recognize the shape of it enough, you might not really look hard enough at the letters. For example, you know if you see a small … … シ ? Or ツ? you instantly know its tsu. But despite seeing it so often and instantly reading it as tsu, i still don’t know which one is which. Because I don’t have to examine it in situations where it could be either
Maybe what you need is two words that are similar except that one uses ア and the other uses マ. Like… アリ (ant) and マリ (Mali, the African nation). Though if do want a word that uses both, マリア? You can also toss in アリア if you still want to lay a trap for yourself.
This is a very good idea!
EDIT: The N5 wordlist actually has a lot of good ones , thanks
I didn’t bother learning Katakana seriously until I started reading Japanese news article. Then I was surprised by the amount of Katakana in the article and it was so frustrated that I couldn’t read them.
Haha, yeah, this is so true. Articles usually don’t use all those fancy terms we learn on WaniKani . Goodbye 里心, hello ホームシック . Books are a different matter, though.
@ajdgaoigjaoirgjo have a look at the concept of 和製英語 (words coined in Japan based on a misunderstanding of an English word or a side meaning). Things like:
コンセント - power socket (based on “concentric plugs” used in the past)
ガードマン - security guard (“guard man” isn’t really an expression, so…)
タレント - a tv personality in a talent show
ホーム - train platform (from the verb “homing” I guess?)
There is also a couple of very important ones to know like:
セクハラ - sexual harassment
ハンスト - hunger strike
リストラ - company restructuring (read: layoffs)
Many others are just a slight mispronunciation of English words so one can guess the meaning more easily.
Nah, it’s short for プラットホーム, because the フォ rendering of the “fo” sound is comparatively recent.
Though on the subject of trains:
ワンマン = “one-man”, a train operated by just a driver, no conductor. You’ll see this on the more rural train lines, and it’s important to know because on these trains you’ll generally always board by the back door and leave by the front, paying the driver as you disembark (same as most buses in Japan).
. Goodbye 里心, hello ホームシック . Books are a different matter, though.