http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http...AQ&dur=302

I know this might sound kind of silly, but I'm still amazed that even 3 years ago I used to think of katakana as just random blobs of strokes. Isn't it amazing how just a little bit of time and perspective can completely change how you look at something?

i Have to agree with you. I used to think the same exact way but it really changes once you've been learning for a few years.

I actually still think of katakana and hiragana primarily as random strokes. I don't really associate them with the kanji they came from, with the exception of の's relationship to 乃--and that's mostly because a lot of place names use the kanji 乃 with the same meaning as the possessive particle の. The only other minor exception might be チ, because it looks so close to the original 千.

I intellectually am aware of the roots of them, and if you asked me off the top of my head to produce the original kanji I could probably do it for about half of them... but it just doesn't transfer over into an everyday mental association.

Unless you're reading older manuscripts that use hentai-gana and alternate cursive forms of the standard kana, I don't know if it's incredibly useful as far as modern Japanese goes.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Unless you're reading older manuscripts that use hentai-gana and alternate cursive forms of the standard kana, I don't know if it's incredibly useful as far as modern Japanese goes.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that this list should be anything for anyone to study vigorously. I just think it's crazy seeing how katakana were derived from kanji, especially the obscure ones :p

Why just Katakana? :-)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...in.svg.png