Katakana chart
All 46 katakana in chart order. Tap one to see it written stroke by stroke, trace it and print it; the voiced and combined sounds are below.
One page: all 46 in chart order, each with its stroke numbers and romaji.
The 46 basic katakana
Rows a, k, s, t, n, h, m, y, r, w and n; columns a, i, u, e, o. 45 of the 46 have their own page.
Voiced sounds: dakuten and handakuten
Two short strokes (dakuten) voice a consonant: k to g, s to z, t to d, h to b. A small circle (handakuten) turns h into p.
Combined sounds (yōon)
An i-column kana followed by a small ya, yu or yo makes a single syllable.
Strokes in the chart
Counted on KanjiVG, the 46 basic katakana take 108 strokes in all. ノ, フ, ヘ and レ are written in a single stroke, and ネ and ホ take the most, 4 each. Katakana mostly keep one part of a kanji, so they look angular next to hiragana.
For 31 of the 46 sounds the hiragana and the katakana come from the same kanji.
Learning katakana after hiragana
Most learners meet katakana second. It helps to pair each katakana with its hiragana: 31 of them even come from the same kanji, such as う and ウ, お and オ and か and カ. Drill the look-alikes on the katakana quiz and print rows from the katakana practice sheets.
The other script
The two scripts are compared, with our counts, in hiragana vs katakana; the hiragana chart is one click away.