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| | J-List side blog: Japanese language overview: Katakana (the boxy kind) |
 | | Today, katakana is used for foreign loan words (like manager, computer, and microprocessor), foreign names (Clinton, Babe Ruth), and occasionally, for funky attention-getting, ala italics in English. |
 | | Katakana came into being after the creation of hiragana, the "woman's script": up until World War II, it was generally viewed as the "man's syllaberry" and was used by men, where women were supposed to use the "feminine" hiragana. |
 | | Katakana is set up the same as hiragana, with the same features: adding two little quote-marks or a circle to some of the lines changes the pronunciation (HA into BA, and so on), and there are "pairs" of kana that allow you to express words like JA, JU, JO, KYA, KYU, KYO, and so on. |
| www.peterpayne.net /2003/03/japanese-language-overview-katakana.html (611 words) |
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