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Katakana are often (but not always) used for transcription of Japanese company names. For example, Suzuki is written スズキ , and Toyota is written トヨタ . As these are common family names, Suzuki being the second most common in Japan, [ 7 ] using katakana helps distinguish company names from surnames in writing.
There are a small number of municipalities in Japan whose names are written in hiragana or katakana, together known as kana, rather than kanji as is traditional for Japanese place names. [1] Many city names written in kana have kanji equivalents that are either phonetic manyōgana, or whose kanji are outside of the jōyō kanji.
It is, however, more common to use ディ instead, such as ディオン to translate the name Dion. In the Ainu language, チ by itself is pronounced [t͡s], and can be combined with the katakana ヤ, ユ, エ, and ヨ to write the other [t͡s] sounds. The combination チェ (pronounced [t͡se]), is interchangeable with セ゚.
Today katakana is most commonly used to write words of foreign origin that do not have kanji representations, as well as foreign personal and place names. Katakana is also used to represent onomatopoeia and interjections, emphasis, technical and scientific terms, transcriptions of the Sino-Japanese readings of kanji, and some corporate branding.
The katakana form has become increasingly popular as an emoticon in the Western world due to its resemblance to a smiling face. This character may be combined with a dakuten, forming じ in hiragana, ジ in katakana, and ji in Hepburn romanization; the pronunciation becomes /zi/ (phonetically [d͡ʑi] or [ʑi] in the middle of words).
In earlier stages of Japanese, different realizations of the moraic nasal were actually indicated in writing. For example, during the Heian period ( Early Middle Japanese ), the "lingual nasal" was spelt differently when followed by a lingual consonant ( /n, s/ ) compared to the "labial nasal" when followed by a labial consonant ( /p, b, m/ ).
Both hiragana and katakana are made in two strokes and represent [nɯ]. They are both derived from the Chinese character 奴. They are both derived from the Chinese character 奴. In the Ainu language , katakana ヌ can be written as small ㇴ to represent a final n, and is interchangeable with the standard katakana ン.
る, in hiragana, or ル in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represent one mora. The hiragana is written in one stroke; the katakana in two. Both represent the sound ⓘ. The Ainu language uses a small katakana ㇽ to represent a final r sound after an u sound (ウㇽ ur).