Katakana Match

A letter and its sound, as one pair of cards

Classic memory games match identical pictures. In Katakana Match, a pair is one katakana card plus one reading card — hiragana by default, or romaji. Match ア with あ (or "a") and both cards stay face up on the board with a green glow.

Katakana cards use white characters, reading cards use blue, at the same size, so color alone tells you which is the letter and which is the reading.

A mismatched pair stays visible for about 1.1 seconds before flipping back — a little longer than the 0.9 seconds in our Memory Match — to give time to check the readings. Saying them aloud ("a… ア") turns even a miss into practice.

What gets asked, and how to tune the difficulty

Each game draws fresh at random from the 46 basic katakana (ア through ン). Voiced marks (゛゜), small kana and the long-vowel mark are left out.

• 4 to 18 pairs (8 to 36 cards). Rows and columns are chosen automatically to keep the board as square as possible
• Time limit: none, 1, 3 or 5 minutes
• More pairs means more of the 46 characters appear, which raises the chance that look-alikes such as シ/ツ or ソ/ン land on the same board

Why only the 46 basic characters

Voiced kana (ガ, ザ…) and semi-voiced kana (パ…) are basic shapes with ゛ or ゜ added. The real work of learning the shapes is in the basic set, so the game focuses on getting those 46 solid first. Keeping the pool narrow also means you meet the same characters again and again over a few games.

Small kana (ャ, ュ, ョ, ッ) and the long-vowel mark (ー) don't have a sound of their own — they only make sense combined with the character before them. That doesn't fit a game where one card maps to one reading, so they're left out.

Suggested ages and a path to follow

For children who already read hiragana, start with Hiragana mode, 4–6 pairs and no time limit: each new shape gets tied to a letter they already know. Add pairs as they improve, and save the time limit for last.

Romaji mode suits children who've started learning romaji (around third grade in Japan) and anyone learning Japanese as a second language. It uses Hepburn spelling: シ = shi, チ = chi, ツ = tsu, フ = fu, ヲ = wo.

A game in progress is saved in this device's browser, so you can close the page and pick up where you left off. Nothing saved is sent anywhere.