Katakana
The angular script, used for loanwords, onomatopoeia, and emphasis. The shapes are simpler than hiragana; the difficulty is that several of them look almost identical.
The 46 basic kana
The gojūon: the sounds every other kana is built from. Each one has its own page, and every cell plays.
a
i
u
e
o
vowel
k
s
t
n
h
m
y
r
w
n-final
The other 58 are the voiced forms and the yōon combinations. See all 104 on one sheet →
The rules that actually trip people up
The chart is the easy half. These are the things that are still wrong six months in.
- ー is the long-vowel mark, and it is a katakana-only device. ラーメン is rāmen, and the dash carries a full beat.
- シ vs ツ, ソ vs ン. The whole distinction is stroke direction: シ and ン are written bottom-up with near-horizontal marks; ツ and ソ come down from the top. Watch the stroke order animation once and it stops being ambiguous.
- Small ッ doubles the next consonant, exactly as in hiragana: ベッド is beddo.
- Extra combinations exist for foreign sounds (ファ, ティ, ヴ, ウィ) that have no hiragana equivalent. They are not in the classical chart but you will meet them on day one.
How to actually learn it
Roughly a week, if you do it this way.
- Read one row a day from the chart above. Five kana. Look at the stroke order on each page and write each one five times.
- Practice only the rows you have covered so far; you can select them. Recognition first, recall once recognition is fast.
- Add the next row before the previous one feels solid. Interference is the point; it is what forces the shapes apart.
- Dakuten and yōon need no separate study. Once the 46 are automatic, the other 58 are the same shapes with marks.