 Katakana are sometimes used instead of hiragana as furigana to give the pronunciation of a word written in Roman characters, or for a foreign word, which is written as kanji for the meaning, but intended to be pronounced as the original.Katakana are also sometimes used to indicate words being spoken in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent.For example, in a manga, the speech of a foreign character or a robot may be represented by "konnichiwa" ("hello") instead of the more typical hiragana .