Take, for example, katakana such as ウェ, ティ, or ジェ. Many, many textbooks and
other language sources, when showing a list of katakana, omit these.

For example:
<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Table_katakana.jpg>

In particular, a lot of Japanese language books show full-looking hiragana and
katakana charts, and they'll mention the special "f-" ones (ファ, フィ, フェ, and
フォ), but not breathe a word about most of the others

This is very, very common, but...why? These are not obscure, archaic devices.
They are used in everyday life. The Japanese word for "Sweden" uses ウェ. The
Nintendo Wii uses ウィ. "Jason", a common English name, is best transcribed as
ジェイソン, which uses ジェ.

So since these special syllables are **_not unusual_**...why is the culture
surrounding the Japanese language such that so many sources pretend they don't
exist?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-23T01:16:33.193
72688
2019-10-24T23:09:27.843
1771
question
katakana
Why do textbooks and other sources pretend special katakana don't exist?
ウェ, ティ and so on are collectively called [extended
katakana](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/19226/5010). As you can see in
the link, the full list of extended katakana is fairly long, to the point
where it's not suitable for beginners. Importantly, it's not for native
Japanese words; most of them are used only when you have to represent foreign
sounds accurately. I think it's a bit like `é` in English; although it's
common in reality, it's for loanwords, and someone who learns English for the
first time doesn't have to know it.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-23T02:01:26.380
72692
2019-10-23T02:42:52.453
2019-10-23T02:42:52.453
5010
5010
72688
answer