Jun 22, 2026 · Learning Katakana

How to tell ソ ン シ and ツ apart

Almost everyone learning katakana gets stuck on the same four characters. There's a consistent visual rule that separates all four, and it's simple enough to apply every time.

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The mistake is trying to memorize each one as a whole shape. They're too similar for that to work. What actually separates them is two small things: how many short strokes a character has, and which direction its long stroke runs.

Step one: count the short strokes

Every one of these four has one long stroke plus some short strokes off to the side.

シ and ツ each have two short strokes. ソ and ン each have one. Before anything else, count. Two short marks means you're looking at シ or ツ. One short mark means ソ or ン. That single check cuts the problem in half.

Step two: follow the long stroke

Now look at the long stroke and ask whether it rises or falls.

In シ and ン the long stroke sweeps up from the bottom at a shallow, flatter angle. Think low and rising. In ツ and ソ the long stroke comes down from the top at a steeper, more vertical angle. Think high and falling.

Put the two checks together and there's only one answer for each.

Two short strokes and rising is シ (shi). Two short strokes and falling is ツ (tsu). One short stroke and rising is ン (n). One short stroke and falling is ソ (so).

There's a second tell if you want to confirm. In シ the short strokes sit down the left side and lie almost flat. In ツ they sit across the top and stand more upright. The orientation of those little marks lines up with the same rising and falling idea, so it reinforces what the long stroke already told you.

Why this works better than repetition

I'm a visual learner, and repetition was never what fixed characters for me. What worked was finding the one visual difference that truly separated two shapes and locking onto that instead of the whole picture. For these four the difference isn't how many times you've seen them. It's the stroke count and the angle. Once those become the thing you look for, the characters stop trading places on you.

This matters more in katakana than people expect. Katakana is where loanwords, foreign names, menus, and signs live, and these four characters turn up everywhere. Misread one and a word you actually know becomes a guess. ソ and ン sitting in the middle of a brand name is the classic spot where beginners stall.

SimplyKatakana drills all 46 characters and gives the confusable ones extra attention, so the stroke count and the angle become automatic instead of something you work out each time. It's free.

Once you see the angle, ソ and ン stop being a coin flip.

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