How This Katakana Test Works
This free test covers all 104 katakana: the 46 basic characters, the 25 dakuten and handakuten variants (ガ, パ and friends), and the 33 combination sounds (キャ, シュ, チョ). You can test in both directions — katakana to romaji, or romaji to katakana, the direction that exposes weak recognition fastest. The wrong options in each question aren't random: they're drawn from the characters genuinely confused with the answer, which in katakana means the infamous quartet — シ (shi) vs ツ (tsu) and ソ (so) vs ン (n) — plus lookalikes such as ク/ワ/フ, ナ/メ and チ/テ. If you can pass this test at speed, you can read a Japanese menu.
Why Katakana Deserves Its Own Test
Most learners are noticeably weaker at katakana than hiragana — not because it's harder, but because it appears less often in beginner textbooks, so it gets a fraction of the practice. Then you arrive in Japan (or open any food label, game or product page) and discover daily life is packed with it: コンビニ, レストラン, アルバイト, インターネット. Loanwords, menus, brand names, technical terms — all katakana. The dedicated shape-discrimination questions here, especially in the シ/ツ/ソ/ン group, target exactly the pairs that make learners misread signs for years. The feedback even explains the stroke-direction trick for telling them apart.
Modes and Progress
The four modes match the hiragana test: Practice with instant feedback and explanations, Exam with results only at the end, the 60-second Speed Challenge for automatic recognition, and a Daily Challenge that's identical for every visitor each day. Results include the full mistake list and a "you confuse these" pair analysis — your personal shortlist for the next study session. Bookmarks, retry-wrong-answers, badges and lifetime progress are all saved in your browser, separately from your hiragana progress, so each script earns its own Master badge.
Where This Fits in Your Study
Learn the characters first with the complete katakana guide — if you already know hiragana, one week is a realistic target since the sounds are identical and only the shapes are new. Then use this test to verify each row, and finish with mixed Speed Challenges until you clear 90%. Already confident? Jump straight to a full hiragana test refresher, or move on to N5 grammar and vocabulary — where your katakana will immediately start earning its keep on loanwords.