Can You Tell the Difference between “カシオ” and ”カツオ”?

To those unfamiliar with Japanese, both words written in katakana may look the same. However, there is a slight difference between the two in the second characters.

When written by hand, the lines at the bottom of these two katakana are written in opposite directions. In the case of “シ,” as found in the first word, the long line at the bottom is written in an upward stroke after writing the two short lines and is pronounced “shi.” Meanwhile, in the case of “ツ,” as found in the second word, the long line at the bottom is written in a downward stroke after writing the two short lines and is pronounced “tsu.”

There are many other characters in Japanese that may look very similar but are differentiated by the order and direction in which the strokes are written.

It is easy for a Japanese person to tell the difference since they have been using katakana since childhood. However, it is often very difficult for non-natives of Japanese to tell the difference and mistakes often occur.

Incidentally, the first word “カシオ” refers to the company CASIO, well known for their G-SHOCK series of watches. The second word, ”カツオ” is read katsuo and means bonito (as in the fish).

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• Japanese Basics
• No. 1: About Japanese
• No. 2: Gairaigo (words of foreign origin)
• No. 3: Differences between Japanese and English
• No. 4: Font and Layout
• No. 5: Japanese Indices
• No. 6: Displaying Japanese on English Versions of Windows or Macintosh Operating Software
• No. 7: Can You Imagine Translations Like This Passing?
• No. 8: The Applicability of Machine Translations
• No. 9: Double-byte and Single-byte Characters
• No. 10: Can You Tell the Difference between “カシオ” and ”カツオ”?

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