Writing Systems of the World 4, Exercise 2: the katakana offset Code (run with py -X utf8): import unicodedata for h in "さしす": k = chr(ord(h) + 0x60) print(h, k, unicodedata.name(h), "|", unicodedata.name(k)) Output from the run: さ サ HIRAGANA LETTER SA | KATAKANA LETTER SA し シ HIRAGANA LETTER SI | KATAKANA LETTER SI す ス HIRAGANA LETTER SU | KATAKANA LETTER SU Yes, the offset still works for these three. Note that Unicode names the second one SI, not SHI: the names follow a systematic spelling of the kana rows, not the usual romanisation. I have only checked these six characters, so I do not claim the offset holds for every kana pair.