A (
hiragana: あ,
katakana: ア) is a Japanese
kana that represents the
mora
Mora may refer to:
People
* Mora (surname)
Places Sweden
* Mora, Säter, Sweden
* Mora, Sweden, the seat of Mora Municipality
* Mora Municipality, Sweden
United States
* Mora, Louisiana, an unincorporated community
* Mora, Minnesota, a city
* M ...
consisting of single vowel
. The hiragana character あ is based on the
sōsho style of
kanji , while the katakana ア is from the
radical
Radical may refer to:
Politics and ideology Politics
*Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change
*Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe and ...
of kanji . In the modern Japanese system of
alphabetical order, it occupies the first position of the alphabet, before い. Additionally, it is the 36th letter in
Iroha, after て, before さ. The
Unicode for あ is U+3042, and the Unicode for ア is U+30A2.
Derivation
The katakana ア derives, via
man'yōgana, from the left element of
kanji . The hiragana あ derives from cursive simplification of the kanji .
Variant forms
Scaled-down versions of the kana (ぁ, ァ) are used to express sounds foreign to the Japanese language, such as ファ (fa). In some
Okinawan writing system
Okinawan, spoken in Okinawa Island, was once the official language of the Ryukyu Kingdom. At the time, documents were written in kanji and hiragana, derived from Japan.
Although generally agreed among linguists to be a distinct language, most ...
s, a small ぁ is also combined with the kana く (''ku'') and ふ (''fu'' or ''hu'') to form the digraphs くぁ ''kwa'' and ふぁ ''hwa'', although others use a small ゎ instead. In
hentaigana, a variant of あ is appeared with a stroke written exactly as ''
wakanmuri''. The version of the kana with
dakuten (あ゙, ア゙) are used to represent either a gurgling sound, a
voiced pharyngeal fricative (), or other similarly articulated sound.
Stroke order
The Hiragana あ is made with three
strokes:
#At the top, a horizontal stroke from left to right.
#A downward vertical stroke starting above and in the center of the last stroke.
#At the bottom, a loop like the Hiragana
の.
The Katakana ア is made with two strokes:
[Gilhooly (2003) p. 128]
#At the top, a stroke consisting of a horizontal line and a short horizontal line proceeding downward and to the left.
#Starting at the end of the last stroke, a curved line proceeding downward and to the left.
Other communicative representations
* Full Braille representation
When lengthening "-a" syllables in Japanese braille, a chōon is always used, as in standard katakana usage instead of adding an あ / ア.
*
Computer encodings
Footnotes
References
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:A (Kana)
Specific kana