Katakana – te

Katakana: テ

Romaji: te

memory aide:  think of a telephone pole.  It looks like a telephone pole with two horizontal bars and one veritical bar.  The sound is the same “te” in telephone.

Characters that look like it: 

Katakana:   ナ    Romaji: na

Katakana:    チ   Romaji: chi

Katakana:    キ   Romaji: ki

Katakana:    モ      Romaji: mo

Katakana:    イ   Romaji: i

Katakana: ケ      Romaji: ke

How do you keep from confusing “te” with the above?  Well, the telephone has two cross bars.  So, that rules out na, i, and ke.  (There are several similar looking characters that have the bar to the side.  Remember also that the “te”lephone pole has the vertical bar in the middle.)

Now, it is going to be a little more difficult to seperate it from mo, chi and ki.  An obvious difference is that the vertical bar stops at the bottom horizontal bar and does not touch the top one.  Unfortunately our memory aide works against this point.  At this point, I can only point out this difference between them.  Remeber the “te”lephone pole does not go to the top bar.

 Example words:

 テープ       teepu      tape

 テーム        teemu       theme

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