Katakana, a set ofJapanesesyllabarycharacters, secondary tohiragana, derived from portions of Chinese characters whose sounds approximate the Japanese sound being represented. Chiefly thought of as being used for loanwords (cf.カタカナ語(“loanword”, literally“katakana word”)), it has a number of other uses too, complementing hiragana; seeKatakana on Wikipedia.Wikipedia