Although Chinese characters, or Kanji, had been adapted into Japanese several hundred years prior to the development of the Kana phonetic syllabaries, the polysyllabic and inflected Japanese language was not easily expressed with a writing system devised for the monosyllabic Chinese language.  The Chinese language lacked inflected items such as verb stems commonly found in Japanese such as -mashita, -masu, and -masen, (i.e. in English, -ing, -ish, -ed, etc.).  Hence verbs were expressed by a principle Chinese character which imparted the root meaning, followed by other cumbersome Kanji which came to represent the verb's variable phonetic verb stem (i.e. had been, will be, could, etc.).  This combination of a Kanji with semantic meaning, followed by other Chinese characters having only phonetic meaning, was naturally confusing.  An early solution was to write the verb stem Kanji smaller than the root character, or to write the phonetic Kanji to the side of the vertical script.

By the ninth century the phonetic Kanji had been simplified into two standardized and parallel phonetic syllabaries known as Kana, or quite literally, "assumed names".  Each Kana symbol derived from a Chinese character of the same sound, but became devoid of semantic meaning.  Katakana (literally "side script"), is the more angular of the phonetic syllabaries and was the first of the Kana syllabaries.  It was invented by Kibi no Makibi (AD 693-755) by the simplification of a single element or radical from each of the phonetic Kanji.  Each Katakana symbol was derived from a Chinese character in the same way as each Hiragana symbol, except that the Hiragana were simplified from entire characters.  Katakana were initially used only as a pronunciation aids in Buddhist scriptures, but were mixed with Chinese characters as they are now from the ninth century on.

In modern times, the two syllabaries have differentiated into distinct usages within written Japanese.  Katakana are now used to write loan words (foreign words brought into Japanese).  Such borrowing usually occurred when the Japanese language lacked a native word to express a foreign idea.  Though loan words have come from Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and other languages.  The modern post-war history of Japan's relationship with the United States has in fact led to English origin loan words being in the majority of foreign words expressed in Japanese.  Hence, modern Japanese has a large number of words that English speaking people can easily recognize.  As they are generally rendered in Katakana, it is quite logical for English speaking people to begin their study of written Japanese with the Katakana script.

Katakana are also used in Japanese for a few other purposes:

• To show emphasis in a way similar to the English use of italic script.
• For onomatopoeic words, whose meaning is their own sound
  (i.e. PA-CHIN, the snapping, click, of a pin ball).
• In representing strange linguistics, such as a foreigner's mistakes in speaking Japanese.
• Written along with Kanji in legal documents.
• Foreign place names.
• To send telegrams.

But enough of that for now, as we will cover this ground in more depth with lessons adapted from READING JAPANESE by Eleanor Harz Jorden and Hamako Ito Chaplin.  Their work has been integrated into the Jôyô 96 study system.