Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

みなさんこんにちは。(Mina-san, konnichiwa.)
Hi everyone, I am Chihiro and welcome back to JapanesePod101.com’s Kantan kana series. In the last lesson, we learned the katakana characters カ(Ka), キ(ki), ク(ku), ケ(ke) and コ(ko). By now, you’ve probably noticed that some of the katakana characters look like the hiragana counterparts. You will see more and more examples of this. So solid knowledge of Hiragana will help you out. Now let’s learn today’s five characters.
We will begin with サ(sa). 1, 2, 3. Make sure the last line curves inwards. Here is カサカサ(kasakasa) The sound of rustling.
Next up is シ(shi). 1, 2, 3. The directions of the lines are pretty important. If it helps you, draw a vertical line on the left side and start all three strokes from that line. One company with the katakana シ(shi) in its name that you might recognize is カシオ(Kashio). Do you recognize it? It’s Casio.
Here is ス(su). 1, 2. アイス(aisu) which is ice cream which you might enjoy in an オアシス(oashisu), “oasis”.
Here is セ(se). 1, 2. They are kind of like similar to hiragana set. Doesn’t it? Here is アクセス(akusesu), “access”.
Our last character is ソ(so). 1, 2. Both strokes start from the top. Again like シ(shi). The angles are very important in order to differentiate it from the character we will learn later. Here is ソース(sōsu) , “sauce” and シーソー(shīsō), “seesaw”.
Now let’s have a short quiz. I will show you a word in katakana and you read it. Bonus points if you remember what it means.
カサカサ(kasakasa) The sound of rustling.
オアシス(oashisu), “oasis”
ソース(sōsu) , “sauce”
Now it’s time for Chihiro’s tip. We have one word show up that was different from the rest in this lesson カサカサ(kasakasa) which describes a rustling sound. Besides converting words from other languages, katakana is used for onomatopoeia words. Japanese has a lot of these sounds and you will see them in written form but they are also used in conversation. Japanesepod101.com has a whole series on onomatopoeia words if you are interested. And a few more will pop up over the course of this series.
Congratulations. Now you know almost one third of all the katakana characters. In the next lesson, we will learn five more and some more words. I will see you then.

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