Misplaced Pages

#932067

66-526: Mekton was the first anime role-playing game available in North America; the anime influence was muted compared to later editions, but this is in parallel with North America's growing exposure to and awareness of anime in general. The use of katakana to represent the title of the game begins with the "Zeta" edition and may or may not be carried over into future editions. A "fourth edition," usually referred to as Mekton Double Zeta and assumed to be using

132-434: A 5×10 grid ( gojūon , 五十音, literally "fifty sounds"), as shown in the adjacent table, read ア ( a ) , イ ( i ) , ウ ( u ) , エ ( e ) , オ ( o ) , カ ( ka ) , キ ( ki ) , ク ( ku ) , ケ ( ke ) , コ ( ko ) and so on. The gojūon inherits its vowel and consonant order from Sanskrit practice. In vertical text contexts, which used to be the default case, the grid is usually presented as 10 columns by 5 rows, with vowels on

198-465: A boardgame-combat-resolution system, plus historical background for the world of Algol and an introductory scenario. Mekton II is a complete revision of the original Mekton rules, including expanded character generation and political info on Algol. This version is compatible with Cyberpunk . In Issue 72 of Space Gamer , Allen Varney commented that "its slick appearance and novel topic will sucker any Japanese-robot fan who can't wait for one of

264-540: A chance to practice reading and writing kana with meaningful words. This was the approach taken by the influential American linguistics scholar Eleanor Harz Jorden in Japanese: The Written Language (parallel to Japanese: The Spoken Language ). Katakana is commonly used by Japanese linguists to write the Ainu language . In Ainu katakana usage, the consonant that comes at the end of a syllable

330-583: A generation of writers passed through its offices and onto other RPG projects in the next decade, such as Phil Masters and Marcus L. Rowland . The magazine included mini-game scenarios, capable of completion in a single night's play, rather than the long games typical of the off-the-shelf campaigns. This would often be in the form of a single task for either existing or new characters to resolve. These could either be added to existing campaign plots, or be used stand-alone, just for an evening, and were easily grasped by those familiar with RPG rules. During this period

396-473: A more pronounced anime influence than the previous two editions; the full cover title of this edition if read in Japanese and translated into English reads "Super Dimension Mobile Warrior Mekton Z", the title of the game referring to both Macross ( The Super Dimension Fortress Macross ) and Gundam ( Mobile Suit Gundam ). Mike Pondsmith decided to self-publish a game which originated in his interest in

462-519: A new nine-member production staff with Matthew Hutson, Kris Shield and Andrew Kenrick continuing from the previous version, and six new members, including Jes Bickham as the new editor. Bickham had previously edited the Battle Games in Middle-earth magazine. White Dwarf continued to be published on a monthly basis until issue #409, January 2014. On 1 February 2014, the magazine moved to

528-462: A newsletter called Owl and Weasel , which ran for twenty-five issues from February 1975 before it evolved into White Dwarf . Originally scheduled for May/June 1977, White Dwarf was first published one month later. According to Shannon Appelcline, "Issue #1 ... was a 20-page magazine printed on glossy stock with a two-color cover." The magazine had a bimonthly schedule, with an initial (and speculative) print run of 4,000. White Dwarf continued

594-433: A once-over, because these guys and gals at R. Talsorian Games know how to put together a good game. This reviewer strongly suggests that Mekton is a must for any game shelf." In his 1990 book The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games , game critic Rick Swan thought that this game "has more in common with tactical military simulations than RPGs." Swan liked designing the robots, calling the process "fun and simple, easily

660-432: A primary alteration; most often it voices the consonant: k → g , s → z , t → d and h → b ; for example, カ ( ka ) becomes ガ ( ga ) . Secondary alteration, where possible, is shown by a circular handakuten : h → p ; For example; ハ ( ha ) becomes パ ( pa ) . Diacritics, though used for over a thousand years, only became mandatory in the Japanese writing system in the second half of the 20th century. Their application

726-456: A quick "pick-up" game. Within the context of the RPG, mecha are referred to as "mektons," abbreviated as "meks" and sometimes alternately called "suits" (as in "power suits" or power armor ). Several official settings have been published. Mekton II is an important historical artifact in that it was among the first RPG books to use the then-new technique of desktop publishing . Mekton Zeta has

SECTION 10

#1732801209933

792-426: A second edition of Mekton (1986) as a 100-page rulebook. The second edition rulebook also included counters and two maps. Mekton II (1987) was the third edition of the game and was the first game to make full use of the company's Interlock System . Mekton II was designed by Pondsmith and published as a 96-page book, and included art by Ben Dunn . The fourth edition of Mekton was called Mekton Zeta (1994), with

858-639: A species, is written ヒト ( hito ) , rather than its kanji 人 . 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, using katakana helps distinguish company names from surnames in writing. Katakana are commonly used on signs, advertisements, and hoardings (i.e., billboards ), for example, ココ ( koko , "here") , ゴミ ( gomi , "trash") , or メガネ ( megane , "glasses") . Words

924-546: A supplement of advanced rules called Mekton Zeta Plus (1995). R. Talsorian published a reprint of that game as the ANimechaniX-branded Mekton Zeta (2000). The first edition of Mekton was a science-fiction system of combat between giant robots, drawing on Japanese animation for inspiration - the first of its type. The second edition from 1985 would add basic role-playing rules. The game covers character and robot construction and combat, including

990-578: A very active albeit small fanbase, centered on the Mekton Zeta Mailing List , an ezmlm based mailing list active since the fall of 1996. The intricate detail of the mecha that can be built in Mekton is both the game's biggest strength and biggest drawback; while nearly anything can be built with the game's construction system, from personal armor to gigantic spaceships, it is very time-consuming and can make it nearly impossible to play

1056-578: A vowel, but this is not exactly the case (and never has been). Existing schemes for the romanization of Japanese either are based on the systematic nature of the script, e.g. nihon-shiki チ ti , or they apply some Western graphotactics , usually the English one, to the common Japanese pronunciation of the kana signs, e.g. Hepburn-shiki チ chi . Both approaches conceal the fact, though, that many consonant-based katakana signs, especially those canonically ending in u , can be used in coda position, too, where

1122-524: Is a Japanese syllabary , one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana , kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji ). The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more complex kanji. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable (strictly mora ) in

1188-419: Is also used for this purpose). This phenomenon is often seen with medical terminology . For example, in the word 皮膚科 hifuka (" dermatology "), the second kanji, 膚 , is considered difficult to read, and thus the word hifuka is commonly written 皮フ科 or ヒフ科 , mixing kanji and katakana. Similarly, difficult-to-read kanji such as 癌 gan (" cancer ") are often written in katakana or hiragana. Katakana

1254-621: Is also used for traditional musical notations, as in the Tozan- ryū of shakuhachi , and in sankyoku ensembles with koto , shamisen and shakuhachi . Some instructors teaching Japanese as a foreign language "introduce katakana after the students have learned to read and write sentences in hiragana without difficulty and know the rules." Most students who have learned hiragana "do not have great difficulty in memorizing" katakana as well. Other instructors introduce katakana first, because these are used with loanwords. This gives students

1320-452: Is mainly used over SMTP and NNTP . White Dwarf (magazine) White Dwarf is a magazine published by British games manufacturer Games Workshop , which has long served as a promotions and advertising platform for Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures products. During the first ten years of its publication, it covered a wide variety of fantasy and science-fiction role-playing games (RPGs) and board games , particularly

1386-456: Is no longer applicable to kana) . The adjacent table shows the origins of each katakana: the red markings of the original Chinese character (used as man'yōgana ) eventually became each corresponding symbol. Katakana is also heavily influenced by Sanskrit due to the original creators having travelled and worked with Indian Buddhists based in East Asia during the era. Official documents of

SECTION 20

#1732801209933

1452-489: Is represented as ベッド ( beddo ). The sokuon also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop . However, it cannot be used to double the na , ni , nu , ne , no syllables' consonants; to double these, the singular n (ン) is added in front of the syllable. The sokuon may also be used to approximate a non-native sound: Bach is written バッハ ( Bahha ); Mach as マッハ ( Mahha ). Both katakana and hiragana usually spell native long vowels with

1518-490: Is represented by a small version of a katakana that corresponds to that final consonant followed by a vowel (for details of which vowel, please see the table at Ainu language § Special katakana for the Ainu language ). For instance, the Ainu word up is represented by ウㇷ゚ ( ウ プ [ u followed by small pu ]). Ainu also uses three handakuten modified katakana: セ゚ ( [tse] ) and either ツ゚ or ト゚ ( [tu̜] ). In Unicode,

1584-427: Is strictly limited in proper writing systems, but may be more extensive in academic transcriptions. Furthermore, some characters may have special semantics when used in smaller sizes after a normal one (see below), but this does not make the script truly bicameral . The layout of the gojūon table promotes a systematic view of kana syllabograms as being always pronounced with the same single consonant followed by

1650-426: Is usually referred to as アメリカ ( Amerika ) , rather than in its ateji kanji spelling of 亜米利加 ( Amerika ) . Katakana are also used for onomatopoeia, words used to represent sounds – for example, ピンポン ( pinpon ) , the "ding-dong" sound of a doorbell. Technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animal and plant species and minerals, are also commonly written in katakana. Homo sapiens , as

1716-536: The Fuzion System rules ( Mekton II and Mekton Z use the older Interlock System ), has been rumored to be in development by publishers R. Talsorian Games since 1997. According to designer Mike Pondsmith , one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the introduction of a new edition is a lack of a true "generic" pre-made campaign setting for the game. Mekton is a moderately supported system (though no new official material has been released since 1996), with

1782-613: The Mobile Suit Gundam manga which he combined with the Imperial Star game system, which he had designed for his own amusement: this led to the "white box edition" of Mekton (1984), a role-playing game which would focus on giant robot combat. Mekton was designed by Pondsmith and Mike Jones and published as a boxed set with a 32-page book, a large color map, two cardstock counter sheets, and dice. Pondsmith founded R. Talsorian Games in 1985, which he used to release

1848-701: The Warhammer Fantasy Battle game. The magazine has always been a conduit for new rules and ideas for GW games as well as a means to showcase developments. It often includes scenarios, campaigns, hobby news, photos of recently released miniatures and tips on building terrain and constructing or converting miniatures . Grombrindal the White Dwarf is also a special character for the Warhammer Dwarf army , whose rules are published only in certain issues of White Dwarf (being revamped for

1914-755: The Cabinet of Japan 's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology . Katakana combinations with beige backgrounds are suggested by the American National Standards Institute and the British Standards Institution as possible uses. Ones with purple backgrounds appear on the 1974 version of the Hyōjun-shiki formatting. Pronunciations are shown in Hepburn romanization . Katakana

1980-460: The Empire of Japan were written exclusively with kyūjitai and katakana. Katakana have variant forms. For example, [REDACTED] (ネ) and [REDACTED] (ヰ). However, katakana's variant forms are fewer than hiragana's. Katakana's choices of man'yōgana segments had stabilized early on and established – with few exceptions – an unambiguous phonemic orthography (one symbol per sound) long before

2046-563: The zhùyīn fúhào characters, with kana serving as initials, vowel medials and consonant finals, marked with tonal marks. A dot below the initial kana represents aspirated consonants, and チ, ツ, サ, セ, ソ, ウ and オ with a superpositional bar represent sounds found only in Taiwanese. Katakana is used as a phonetic guide for the Okinawan language , unlike the various other systems to represent Okinawan, which use hiragana with extensions. The system

Mekton - Misplaced Pages Continue

2112-515: The 1900 script regularization. The following table shows the method for writing each katakana character. It is arranged in a traditional manner, where characters are organized by the sounds that make them up. The numbers and arrows indicate the stroke order and direction, respectively. In addition to fonts intended for Japanese text and Unicode catch-all fonts (like Arial Unicode MS ), many fonts intended for Chinese (such as MS Song) and Korean (such as Batang) also include katakana. In addition to

2178-418: The Japanese language is represented by one character or kana in each system. Each kana represents either a vowel such as " a " (katakana ア ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as " ka " (katakana カ ); or " n " (katakana ン ), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds like English m , n or ng ( [ ŋ ] ) or like the nasal vowels of Portuguese or Galician . In contrast to

2244-859: The Katakana Phonetic Extensions block ( U+31F0–U+31FF ) exists for Ainu language support. These characters are used for the Ainu language only. Taiwanese kana (タイ [REDACTED] ヲァヌ [REDACTED] ギイ [REDACTED] カア [REDACTED] ビェン [REDACTED] ) is a katakana-based writing system once used to write Holo Taiwanese , when Taiwan was under Japanese rule . It functioned as a phonetic guide for Chinese characters , much like furigana in Japanese or Zhùyīn fúhào in Chinese. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, including Hakka and Formosan languages . Unlike Japanese or Ainu, Taiwanese kana are used similarly to

2310-491: The United Kingdom and North America. Each issue contained many special " freebies " as well as articles on the history of the magazine and the founding of Games Workshop. The monthly battle reports are a regular feature. Battle reports detail a battle between two or more forces, usually with their own specific victory conditions. The reports follow the gamers through their army selection, tactics and deployment, through

2376-399: The addition of a second vowel kana. However, in foreign loanwords, katakana instead uses a vowel extender mark, called a chōonpu ("long vowel mark"). This is a short line (ー) following the direction of the text, horizontal for yokogaki (horizontal text), and vertical for tategaki (vertical text). For example, メール mēru is the gairaigo for e-mail taken from the English word "mail";

2442-500: The battle to their respective conclusions. The format varies, ranging from a simplified, generalized style to a more detailed and visual style. The page count of the US and UK publications was substantially different (for example, bearing in mind the US/UK numbering difference: issue US #319, 156 pages; UK #320, 132 pages) with substantial differences in actual amount of content (for example in

2508-466: The computer equipment of the day. This space is narrower than the square space traditionally occupied by Japanese characters, hence the name "half-width". In this scheme, diacritics (dakuten and handakuten) are separate characters. When originally devised, the half-width katakana were represented by a single byte each, as in JIS X 0201, again in line with the capabilities of contemporary computer technology. In

2574-507: The fantasy and science fiction role-playing and board-gaming theme developed in Owl and Weasel . Due to the increase in available space, there was an opportunity to produce reviews, articles and scenarios to a greater depth than had been possible in Owl and Weasel . During the early 1980s the magazine focused mainly on the "big three" role-playing games of the time: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons , RuneQuest and Traveller . In addition to this

2640-462: The full list. In modern Japanese, katakana is most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages or loanwords (other than words historically imported from Chinese), called gairaigo . For example, "ice cream" is written アイスクリーム ( aisukurīmu ) . Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names, foreign places, and foreign personal names. For example, the United States

2706-702: The hiragana syllabary, which is used for Japanese words not covered by kanji and for grammatical inflections, the katakana syllabary usage is comparable to italics in English; specifically, it is used for transcription of foreign-language words into Japanese and the writing of loan words (collectively gairaigo ); for emphasis; to represent onomatopoeia ; for technical and scientific terms; and for names of plants, animals, minerals and often Japanese companies. Katakana evolved from Japanese Buddhist monks transliterating Chinese texts into Japanese. The complete katakana script consists of 48 characters, not counting functional and diacritic marks: These are conceived as

Mekton - Misplaced Pages Continue

2772-461: The introduction of multibyte characters – in the 1980s. Most computers of that era used katakana instead of kanji or hiragana for output. Although words borrowed from ancient Chinese are usually written in kanji, loanwords from modern Chinese varieties that are borrowed directly use katakana instead. The very common Chinese loanword rāmen , written in katakana as ラーメン , is rarely written with its kanji ( 拉麺 ). There are rare instances where

2838-478: The kanji 人 has a Japanese pronunciation, written in hiragana as ひと hito (person), as well as a Chinese derived pronunciation, written in katakana as ジン jin (used to denote groups of people). Katakana is sometimes used instead of hiragana as furigana to give the pronunciation of a word written in Roman characters, or for a foreign word, which is written as kanji for the meaning, but intended to be pronounced as

2904-528: The late 1970s, two-byte character sets such as JIS X 0208 were introduced to support the full range of Japanese characters, including katakana, hiragana and kanji. Their display forms were designed to fit into an approximately square array of pixels, hence the name "full-width". For backward compatibility, separate support for half-width katakana has continued to be available in modern multi-byte encoding schemes such as Unicode, by having two separate blocks of characters – one displayed as usual (full-width) katakana,

2970-468: The magazine included many features such as the satirical comic strip Thrud the Barbarian and Dave Langford 's "Critical Mass" book review column, as well as a comical advertising series " The Androx Diaries ", and always had cameos and full scenarios for a broad selection of the most popular games of the time, as well as a more rough and informal editorial style. In the mid-late 1980s, however, there

3036-439: The most enjoyable part of the game." However, Swan found the character generation rules "the game's weakest feature, apparently included for the sole purpose of generating pilots for the robots ... [the pilots] are essentially irrelevant to the focus of the game." Swan concluded by giving the game a rating of 2.5 out of 4, saying, "It's possible to design a campaign setting from the information provided ... but I'm not sure it's worth

3102-609: The most recent edition of the rules). It is never stated who exactly the White Dwarf is, but it is implied that he is the spirit of Snorri Whitebeard, the last king of the Dwarfs to receive respect from an Elf. The image of the White Dwarf has graced the cover of many issues of the magazine. The image was also used on the character sheet for the Dwarf character in HeroQuest . In December 2004, White Dwarf published its 300th issue in

3168-455: The nasal ン ( n ). This can appear in several positions, most often next to the N signs or, because it developed from one of many mu hentaigana , below the u column. It may also be appended to the vowel row or the a column. Here, it is shown in a table of its own. The script includes two diacritic marks placed at the upper right of the base character that change the initial sound of a syllabogram. A double dot, called dakuten , indicates

3234-408: The opposite has occurred, with kanji forms created from words originally written in katakana. An example of this is コーヒー kōhī , (" coffee "), which can alternatively be written as 珈琲 . This kanji usage is occasionally employed by coffee manufacturers or coffee shops for novelty. Katakana is used to indicate the on'yomi (Chinese-derived readings) of a kanji in a kanji dictionary . For instance,

3300-436: The original. Katakana are also sometimes used to indicate words being spoken in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent. For example, in a manga , the speech of a foreign character or a robot may be represented by コンニチワ konnichiwa ("hello") instead of the more typical hiragana こんにちは . Some Japanese personal names are written in katakana. This was more common in the past, hence elderly women often have katakana names. This

3366-638: The other displayed as half-width katakana. Although often said to be obsolete, the half-width katakana are still used in many systems and encodings. For example, the titles of mini discs can only be entered in ASCII or half-width katakana, and half-width katakana are commonly used in computerized cash register displays, on shop receipts, and Japanese digital television and DVD subtitles. Several popular Japanese encodings such as EUC-JP , Unicode and Shift JIS have half-width katakana code as well as full-width. By contrast, ISO-2022-JP has no half-width katakana, and

SECTION 50

#1732801209933

3432-447: The other robot games due out soon. Pass the word." Phil Frances reviewed Mekton for White Dwarf #87, and stated that "In all, a most worthwhile effort – not as slick as FASA's Mechwarrior or Battletech , but admirably simple and flexible." In Issue 79 of Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer , David Jacobs commented that "Even if you've seen all of the Japanese animation featuring giant robots, I strongly suggest that you at least give it

3498-409: The right hand side and ア ( a ) on top. Katakana glyphs in the same row or column do not share common graphic characteristics. Three of the syllabograms to be expected, yi , ye and wu , may have been used idiosyncratically with varying glyphs , but never became conventional in any language and are not present at all in modern Japanese. The 50-sound table is often amended with an extra character,

3564-474: The role-playing games Advanced Dungeons & Dragons ( AD&D ), Call of Cthulhu , RuneQuest and Traveller . These games were all published by other games companies and distributed in the United Kingdom by Games Workshop stores. The magazine underwent a major change in style and content in the late 1980s. It is now dedicated exclusively to the miniature wargames produced by Games Workshop. Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone initially produced

3630-468: The same issues: US, 114 pages; UK, 71 pages) and each magazine had substantial overlap with the other as well as unique articles. In June 2010 Andrew Kenrick replaced Mark Latham as editor. Kenrick had previously been sub-editor, as well as sub-editing other Games Workshop material such as the most recent edition of Codex: Space Marines . As of the October 2012 issue, White Dwarf was redesigned with

3696-488: The slant and stroke shape. These differences in slant and shape are more prominent when written with an ink brush . Notes Using small versions of the five vowel kana, many digraphs have been devised, mainly to represent the sounds in words of other languages. Digraphs with orange backgrounds are the general ones used for loanwords or foreign places or names, and those with blue backgrounds are used for more accurate transliterations of foreign sounds, both suggested by

3762-496: The small y kana is called yōon . A character called a sokuon , which is visually identical to a small tsu ッ, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). This is represented in rōmaji by doubling the consonant that follows the sokuon . In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; for example, compare サカ saka "hill" with サッカ sakka "author". Geminated consonants are common in transliterations of foreign loanwords; for example, English "bed"

3828-486: The trouble, because it's merely a way to kill time until the next robotic showdown." A prototype of a video game based on Mekton was developed by Silicon Graphics using Coryphaeus Software's Activation Engine for the IRIX operating system. It was presented at the 1995 SIGGRAPH and bundled on CD-ROMs with other IRIX tech demos. Katakana Katakana ( 片仮名 、 カタカナ , IPA: [katakaꜜna, kataꜜkana] )

3894-453: The usual full-width ( 全角 , zenkaku ) display forms of characters, katakana has a second form, half-width ( 半角 , hankaku ) . The half-width forms were originally associated with the JIS X 0201 encoding. Although their display form is not specified in the standard, in practice they were designed to fit into the same rectangle of pixels as Roman letters to enable easy implementation on

3960-443: The vowel is unvoiced and therefore barely perceptible. Of the 48 katakana syllabograms described above, only 46 are used in modern Japanese, and one of these is preserved for only a single use: A small version of the katakana for ya , yu or yo (ャ, ュ or ョ, respectively) may be added to katakana ending in i . This changes the i vowel sound to a glide ( palatalization ) to a , u or o , e.g. キャ ( ki + ya ) /kja/. Addition of

4026-512: The writer wishes to emphasize in a sentence are also sometimes written in katakana, mirroring the usage of italics in European languages. Pre–World War II official documents mix katakana and kanji in the same way that hiragana and kanji are mixed in modern Japanese texts, that is, katakana were used for okurigana and particles such as wa or o . Katakana was also used for telegrams in Japan before 1988, and for computer systems – before

SECTION 60

#1732801209933

4092-722: The ー lengthens the e . There are some exceptions, such as ローソク ( rōsoku ( 蝋燭 , "candle") ) or ケータイ ( kētai ( 携帯 , "mobile phone") ), where Japanese words written in katakana use the elongation mark , too. Standard and voiced iteration marks are written in katakana as ヽ and ヾ, respectively. Small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds (ハァ haa , ネェ nee ), but in katakana they are more often used in yōon-like extended digraphs designed to represent phonemes not present in Japanese; examples include チェ ( che ) in チェンジ chenji ("change"), ファ ( fa ) in ファミリー famirī ("family") and ウィ ( wi ) and ディ ( di ) in ウィキペディア Misplaced Pages ; see below for

4158-488: Was a repositioning from being a general periodical covering all aspects and publishers within the hobby niche to a focus almost exclusively on Games Workshop's own products and publications. The last Dungeons & Dragons article appeared in issue 93, with the changeover being complete by issue #102. In this respect it took over some of the aspects of the Citadel Journal , an intermittent publication that supported

4224-461: Was developed in the 9th century (during the early Heian period ) by Buddhist monks in Nara in order to transliterate texts and works of arts from India, by taking parts of man'yōgana characters as a form of shorthand, hence this kana is so-called kata ( 片 , "partial, fragmented") . For example, ka ( カ ) comes from the left side of ka ( 加 , lit. "increase", but the original meaning

4290-667: Was devised by the Okinawa Center of Language Study of the University of the Ryukyus . It uses many extensions and yōon to show the many non-Japanese sounds of Okinawan. This is a table of katakana together with their Hepburn romanization and rough IPA transcription for their use in Japanese. Katakana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojūon kana without them. Characters shi シ , tsu ツ , so ソ , and n ン look very similar in print except for

4356-725: Was particularly common among women in the Meiji and Taishō periods, when many poor, illiterate parents were unwilling to pay a scholar to give their daughters names in kanji. Katakana is also used to denote the fact that a character is speaking a foreign language, and what is displayed in katakana is only the Japanese "translation" of their words. Some frequently used words may also be written in katakana in dialogs to convey an informal, conversational tone. Some examples include マンガ ("manga"), アイツ aitsu ("that guy or girl; he/him; she/her"), バカ baka ("fool"), etc. Words with difficult-to-read kanji are sometimes written in katakana (hiragana

#932067