カタカナ (Katakana)

Katakana is one of the 3 alphabets used in Japan. It is largely the province of adopted foreign words such as　デパート (depa-to = department store), アメリカ (America)　and　テレビ (terebi = television). It's sort of a game I play to try to figure out what signs in Katakana mean. Here's a few I've seen recently - see how you do! Remember, Japanese has no sound for 'l' so 'r's can be 'l' or 'r' sounds. Also, almost all characters are consonant-vowel combinations (vowels and 'n' are exceptions) so double consonants (th, sh, br, tr, st, etc.) and words ending with consonants are rare - you'll see almost all words are consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel. (answers below)

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1. レストラン (resutoran)

2. アップル (apuru)
3. ゴルフ (gorufu)

4. エスカレーター (esukare-ta-)

5. トンネル (tonneru)

6. クリスマス (kurisumasu)

7. ボックス (bokusu)

8. スケジュール (sukejyu-ru)

9. スチール (suchi-ru)
10. ブライアン　エンゲル　(buraian engeru)

photo: tatoo which says 'kyasarin' (presumably Katherine or Kathleen)

1. restaurant
2. apple
3. golf
4. escalator
5. tunnel
6. Christmas
7. box
8. schedule
9. steel

10. Brian Engel