Katakana (カタカナ)

After you've memorised all the Hiragana characters and sounds, you can start learning Katakana. This time it's much easier though, because you've already learned the sounds.

Each Katakana represents the exact Hiragana sound. For example:

A = あ = ア

Just view it as a different handwriting (eventhough sometimes it feels like a different letter). I know you're thinking "WHY are there two kana's of the same sound?".

I used to think the same thing, I felt like I'm learning alphabets of two different languages. BUT, that's only because we're trying to view the language from our own language's perspective. 

NOTE:

You cannot make a logical explanation of some things about your own language if you explain it to a foriegner trying to learn it, because it's just the way it is. There are things in Arabic that I see as logical, but an English person might need me to give examples in his/her own language in order to find logic and that it is not always possible.

As I mentioned in previous posts, Katakana is used for words that were borrowed from other languages OR western words. For example, some fruits have Japanese names but others don't, like:

Apple = Ringo (りんご) so it's written in Hiragana

Lemon = Remon (レモン) so it's written in Katakana

Simple isn't it . So now you can start learning Katakana from this chart:

You'll notice that there are extra syllables on the bottom of this chart because as Katakana is associated with foreign words, there are a few words that wouldn't be transliterated correctly if not for additional syllables. So naturally, they added a few more.

For instance, some names like Fadiya (an Arabic girls' name) would've been Hadiya or Fuadiya which sounds different, but now that there is 'FA' we can write it as Fadiya.

Again you can grab and print the Katakana worksheets from Japanese-Lesson and practice writing.

My Advice:
Take an online test on kanapro for all the kana, because it is a great way to practice plus it's fun!