Vocabulary (Review)

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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 ナ(na), ニ(ni), ヌ(nu), ネ(ne) and ノ(no). If you remember your hiragana that will really help with this lesson. If you see some characters you don’t know, be sure to review some past lessons. Now, let’s take a look at the next five katakana characters.
We will begin with ハ(ha). 1, 2. Just two short lines, one going left and the other going right. Think of it as a line broken in half. Here is ハニー(hanī) “honey” and here is ハイチ(Haichi) “Haiti”, a country in the West Indies.
Next up is ヒ(hi) 1, 2. Perhaps it looks like the heal of the foot. Here is コーヒー(kōhī), “coffee” and here is another onomatopoeia for ヒソヒソ(hisohiso), a word used to describe something when it’s done secretly.
Next up is フ(fu), just a single stroke with the turn. Now you can write ハーフ(hāfū), “half” and here is アフター(afutā), “after”. Here is the easiest one we will learn today.
Remember the hiragana ヘ(he) while in katakana, it’s the same thing. Let’s write ヘクター(Hekutā). For those who have the name Hector. And here is ヘナ(hena) as in the Henna plant.
Our last character is ホ(ho). Probably the most difficult one in this lesson, 1, 2, 3, 4. Now you can write ホース(hōsu) a hose used for gardening and here is another onomatopoeia chord [ph] for you. ホーホー(hōhō). Can you guess what that is? It’s a sound an owl makes.
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.
ハニー(hanī) “honey”
コーヒー(kōhī), “coffee”
ホース(hōsu) “ hose”
Now it’s time for Chihiro’s tip. There are many words in which the foreign word is used over the Japanese counterpart. For example, words like ハニー(hanī) and アフター(afutā) also have Japanese equivalents. Sometimes Japanese uses the non-Japanese word because the image associated with it is different. You see a lot of it when talking about the latest trends, concepts and ideas whereas in katakana, you tend to have a modern feel to them.
Have you ever been to メキシコ(Mekishiko) or モナコ(Monako) even if you haven’t, at least you learned how to write Mexico and Monaco in katakana in the next lesson. I will see you then.

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