Wa (kana)

Wa (hiragana: わ, katakana: ワ) is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one mora. The combination of an W-column kana letter with ゛わ゙ in hiragana was introduced to represent [va] in the 19th century and 20th century. It represents [wa] and has origins in the character 和. There is also a small ゎ/ヮ, that is used to write the morae /kwa/ and /gwa/ (くゎ, ぐゎ), which are almost obsolete in contemporary standard Japanese but still exist in the Ryukyuan languages. A few loanword such as シークヮーサー(shiikwaasa from Okinawan language) and ムジカ・アンティクヮ・ケルン(Musica Antiqua Köln, German early music group) contains this letter in Japanese. Katakana ワ is also sometimes written with dakuten, ヷ, to represent a /va/ sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to write this. It is far more common to represent the /va/ sound with the combination ヴァ.

Form Rōmaji Hiragana Katakana
Normal w-
(わ行 wa-gyō)
wa
waa
, wah
わあ, わぁ
わー
ワア, ワァ
ワー
wa
hiragana
katakana
transliterationwa
hiragana origin
katakana origin
Man'yōgana和 丸 輪
spelling kanaわらびのワ Warabi no "wa"
unicodeU+308F, U+30EF
braille

The kana は (ha) is read as “wa” when it represents a particle.

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing わ
Stroke order in writing ワ
Stroke order in writing わ
Stroke order in writing ワ

Other communicative representations

  • Full Braille representation
わ / ワ in Japanese Braille
わ / ワ
wa

va
わあ / ワー
ヷー
Character information
Preview
Unicode nameHIRAGANA LETTER WAKATAKANA LETTER WAHALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER WACIRCLED KATAKANA WA
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode12431U+308F12527U+30EF65436U+FF9C13051U+32FB
UTF-8227 130 143E3 82 8F227 131 175E3 83 AF239 190 156EF BE 9C227 139 187E3 8B BB
Numeric character referenceわわワワワワ㋻㋻
Shift JIS[1]130 23782 ED131 14383 8F220DC
EUC-JP[2]164 239A4 EF165 239A5 EF142 2208E DC
GB 18030[3]164 239A4 EF165 239A5 EF132 49 155 5484 31 9B 36
EUC-KR[4] / UHC[5]170 239AA EF171 239AB EF
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[6]198 243C6 F3199 169C7 A9
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[7]199 118C7 76199 235C7 EB
Character information
Preview
Unicode nameHIRAGANA LETTER SMALL WAKATAKANA LETTER SMALL WAKATAKANA LETTER VA
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode12430U+308E12526U+30EE12535U+30F7
UTF-8227 130 142E3 82 8E227 131 174E3 83 AE227 131 183E3 83 B7
Numeric character referenceゎゎヮヮヷヷ
Shift JIS (plain)[1]130 23682 EC131 14283 8E
Shift JIS (KanjiTalk 7)[8]130 23682 EC131 14283 8E136 10688 6A
Shift JIS-2004[9]130 23682 EC131 14283 8E132 14684 92
EUC-JP (plain)[2]164 238A4 EE165 238A5 EE
EUC-JIS-2004[10]164 238A4 EE165 238A5 EE167 242A7 F2
GB 18030[3]164 238A4 EE165 238A5 EE129 57 167 5381 39 A7 35
EUC-KR[4] / UHC[5]170 238AA EE171 238AB EE
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[6]198 242C6 F2199 168C7 A8
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[7]199 117C7 75199 234C7 EA

References

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