59-529: The micrometre ( Commonwealth English as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures ; SI symbol: μm ) or micrometer ( American English ), also commonly known by the non-SI term micron , is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI) equalling 1 × 10 metre (SI standard prefix " micro- " = 10 ); that is, one millionth of a metre (or one thousandth of
118-432: A millimetre , 0.001 mm , or about 0.000 04 inch ). The nearest smaller common SI unit is the nanometre , equivalent to one thousandth of a micrometre, one millionth of a millimetre or one billionth of a metre ( 0.000 000 001 m ). The micrometre is a common unit of measurement for wavelengths of infrared radiation as well as sizes of biological cells and bacteria , and for grading wool by
177-434: 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
236-524: 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
295-483: 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
354-635: 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
413-573: 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
472-503: Is a homograph of the device's name. In spoken English, they may be distinguished by pronunciation, as the name of the measuring device is often stressed on the second syllable ( / m aɪ ˈ k r ɒ m ɪ t ər / my- KROM -it-ər ), whereas the systematic pronunciation of the unit name, in accordance with the convention for pronouncing SI units in English, places the stress on the first syllable ( / ˈ m aɪ k r oʊ m iː t ər / MY -kroh-meet-ər ). The plural of micron
531-515: 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
590-419: 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
649-617: 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
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#1732855878232708-470: Is in the process of developing) its own standards of usage, often under the influence of local languages. These dialects are sometimes referred to as New Englishes (McArthur, p. 36); most of them inherited non-rhoticity from Southern British English. Several dialects of West African English exist, with a lot of regional variation and some influence from indigenous languages. West African English tends to be syllable-timed , and its phoneme inventory
767-539: Is increasingly being used in the home as the first language. Small communities of native English speakers can be found in Zimbabwe , Botswana , and Namibia ; the dialects spoken are similar to native South African English . Prior to Togo 's admission at the 2022 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting , Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey said that he expected Commonwealth membership to provide opportunities for Togolese citizens to learn English , and remarked that
826-456: Is much simpler than that of Received Pronunciation ; this sometimes affects mutual intelligibility with native varieties of English. A distinctive North African English , often with significant influences from Bantu languages such as Swahili , is spoken in countries such as Kenya or Tanzania , particularly in Nairobi and other cities where there is an expanding middle class, for whom English
885-451: 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
944-584: Is normally microns , though micra was occasionally used before 1950. The official symbol for the SI prefix micro- is a Greek lowercase mu . Unicode has inherited U+00B5 µ MICRO SIGN from ISO/IEC 8859-1 , distinct from the code point U+03BC μ GREEK SMALL LETTER MU . According to the Unicode Consortium , the Greek letter character is preferred, but implementations must recognize
1003-489: 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
1062-486: 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,
1121-427: 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
1180-426: 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
1239-718: 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
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#17328558782321298-456: 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
1357-553: 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
1416-515: 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
1475-500: The Commonwealth, although comparatively very few speakers of Indian English are first-language speakers. The same is true of English spoken in other parts of South Asia , e.g. Pakistani English , Sri Lankan English , Bangladeshi English and Myanmar English . South Asian English phonology is highly variable; stress, rhythm and intonation are generally different from those of native varieties. There are also several peculiarities at
1534-418: 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
1593-838: 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
1652-595: The United Kingdom have produced their own English dictionaries and style guides , and may rely on those produced in other countries. Southern Hemisphere native varieties of English began to develop during the 18th century, with the colonisation of Australasia and South Africa. Australian English and New Zealand English are closely related to each other and share some similarities with South African English (though it has unique influences from indigenous African languages, and Dutch influences it inherited along with
1711-399: 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";
1770-463: 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
1829-531: The country sought closer ties with the Anglophone world . Hong Kong ceased to be part of the Commonwealth (by virtue of being a British territory) in 1997. Nonetheless, the English language there still enjoys status as an official language. English was introduced into the subcontinent by the British Raj . Among the partitioned post-independent countries, India has the largest English-speaking population in
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1888-499: The development of Afrikaans from Dutch). Canadian English contains elements of British English and American English , as well as many Canadianisms and some French influences. It is the product of several waves of immigration and settlement, from Britain, Ireland, France, the United States, and around the world, over a period of more than two centuries. Modern Canadian English has taken significant vocabulary and spelling from
1947-404: The diameter of the fibres. The width of a single human hair ranges from approximately 20 to 200 μm . Between 1 μm and 10 μm: Between 10 μm and 100 μm: The term micron and the symbol μ were officially accepted for use in isolation to denote the micrometre in 1879, but officially revoked by the International System of Units (SI) in 1967. This became necessary because the older usage
2006-399: 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
2065-702: 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
2124-461: 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
2183-474: 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
2242-528: 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,
2301-474: The letter u for the symbol if the Greek letter μ was not available, as in " 15 um ". The Unicode CJK Compatibility block contains square forms of some Japanese katakana measure and currency units. U+3348 ㍈ SQUARE MIKURON corresponds to ミクロン mikuron . English in the Commonwealth of Nations The use of the English language in current and former Commonwealth countries
2360-410: The levels of morphology, syntax and usage, some of which can also be found among educated speakers. Southeast Asian English comprises Singapore English , Malaysian English , and Brunei English ; it features some influence from Malay and Chinese languages, as well as Indian English . Other languages: Katakana Katakana ( 片仮名 、 カタカナ , IPA: [katakaꜜna, kataꜜkana] )
2419-447: The micro sign as well for compatibility with legacy character sets . Most fonts use the same glyph for the two characters . Before desktop publishing became commonplace, it was customary to render the symbol μ in texts produced with mechanical typewriters by combining a slightly lowered slash with the letter u . For example, "15 μm" would appear as " 15 / um ". This gave rise in early word processing to substituting just
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2478-455: 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
2537-408: 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,
2596-436: 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
2655-634: 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
2714-690: The rest of the Commonwealth. English in the Commonwealth is diverse, and many regions have developed their own local varieties of the language. In Cyprus , it does not have official status but is widely used as a lingua franca . English is spoken as a first or second language in most of the Commonwealth. Written English in the current and former Commonwealth generally favours British English spelling as opposed to American English , with some exceptions, particularly in Canada, where there are strong influences from neighbouring American English. Few Commonwealth countries besides Australia, Canada, South Africa, and
2773-409: 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,
2832-950: The shared political and social institutions of Commonwealth countries. Caribbean English is influenced by the English-based Creole varieties spoken, but they are not one and the same. There is a great deal of variation in the way English is spoken, with a "Standard English" at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum and Creole languages at the other. These dialects have roots in 17th-century British and Irish English , and African languages , plus localised influences from other colonial languages including French, Spanish, and Dutch; unlike most native varieties of English, West Indian dialects often tend to be syllable-timed rather than stress-timed . Second-language varieties of English in Africa and Asia have often undergone " indigenisation "; that is, each English-speaking community has developed (or
2891-488: 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
2950-496: 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"
3009-450: 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
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#17328558782323068-443: 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
3127-507: 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
3186-722: 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
3245-457: 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
3304-649: 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
3363-466: Was incompatible with the official adoption of the unit prefix micro- , denoted μ, during the creation of the SI in 1960. In the SI, the systematic name micrometre became the official name of the unit, and μm became the official unit symbol. In American English , the use of "micron" helps differentiate the unit from the micrometer , a measuring device, because the unit's name in mainstream American spelling
3422-424: Was largely inherited from British colonisation , with some exceptions. English serves as the medium of inter-Commonwealth relations and the language forms part of the common culture of the Commonwealth . Commonwealth English refers to English as practised in the Commonwealth; the term is most often interchangeable with British English , but is also used to distinguish between British English and that in
3481-721: 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
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