Wo (kana)

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wo
hiragana katakana
transliteration	(w)o
hiragana origin	遠
katakana origin	乎
Man'yōgana	乎 呼 遠 鳥 怨 越 少 小 尾 麻 男 緒 雄
spelling kana	尾張のヲ (W)owari no "(w)o"
unicode	U+3092, U+30F2
braille

を, in hiragana, or ヲ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. Both are phonemically /wo/, reflected in the Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki Romanization wo, although for phonological reasons, the actual pronunciation is [o] ^ⓘ, reflected in the Hepburn romanization o.

Modern usage[edit]

In the 1946 orthographic reforms, を was largely replaced by お. In Japanese, this kana is used almost exclusively for a particle for both forms; therefore, the katakana form (ヲ) is rare in everyday language mostly seen in all-katakana text. A "wo" sound is usually represented as うぉ or ウォ instead.

Despite originally representing [wo], the syllable is pronounced [o] by almost all modern speakers. Singers may pronounce it with the [w], as may those attempting to emphasize the syllable for clarity. Apart from some literate speakers who have revived [wo] as a spelling pronunciation, though, this [w] sound is extinct in the modern spoken language.

In Romaji, the kana is transliterated variably as ⟨o⟩ or ⟨wo⟩, with the former being faithful to standard pronunciation, but the latter avoiding confusion with お and オ. を is transliterated as o in Modified Hepburn and Kunrei and as wo in Traditional Hepburn and Nippon-shiki.

Katakana ヲ can sometimes be combined with a dakuten, ヺ, to represent a /vo/ sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to do this. The combination ヴォ is used far more frequently to represent the /vo/ sound.

Hiragana を is still used in several Okinawan orthographies for the syllable /o~wo/; in the Ryukyu University system it is /o/, whereas お is /ʔo/. Katakana ヲ is used in Ainu for /wo/.

Stroke order[edit]

Other communicative representations[edit]

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
尾張のヲ Wowari no "Wo"	▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ⓘ

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-35 Japanese Braille

• Full Braille representation

を / ヲ in Japanese Braille
を / ヲ wo	をう / ヲー wō	ヺ vo	ヺー vō

• Computer encodings

Look up を or ヲ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References[edit]