Your own country is likely to feature in most of your first conversations in Japanese. Knowing the names of a few other countries will help you talk with other students, and will help you to get started discussing current affairs generally. In this lesson we'll learn the names of 23 countries - in the further reading section you can find a link to our collection of the Japanese names of all ~200 countries in the world.
Most country names do actually have kanji forms in Japanese, often using the concept known as
あ
当
てじ
字
, where kanji are assigned based on their readings. However, as is often the case with words that originated outside Japan, the most common form of the word for most of these countries in Japan today uses katakana. (The exceptions are countries such as China and Korea which themselves use kanji as part of their written language.) As a result, learning country names is a great way to practice your katakana!
To complete this lesson, work through the activities below.
Estimated time: 12 minutes