Artistic Forces/Katakana

Katakana (kanji: 片仮名, katakana: カタカナ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script, which is referred to romaji. This Japanese term literally means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more complex kanji. Both katakana and hiragana are considered kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable (strictly mora) in 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 either like English m, n or ng ([ŋ]) or like the nasal vowels of Portuguese as an example.

In contrast to 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.

The katakana letters are derived from the parts of the kanji. They developed from kunten (訓点), a way of translating Chinese letters so that the Japanese Buddhist monks could possibly read them. The earliest examples of kunten date from the end of the eighth century, and the earliest records of katakana were evolved into an independent form of the Japanese writing system dating back to 951 AD.

As a form of kana survives in the world of Animatopia, katakana became one of the official but popular scripts that are commonly used by the RSSDF, Josei Guntai, Kemonomimi, Yami Musume, Zaibatsu Teikoku, and Kyoudai Gundan, with the other one being hiragana.