Ha (

hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...

: は,

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...

: ハ) is one of the

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

kana are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , wh ...

, each of which represent one mora. Both represent . They are also used as a grammatical particle (in such cases, they denote , including in the greeting "kon'nichiwa") and serve as the

topic marker A topic marker is a grammatical particle used to mark the topic of a sentence. It is found in Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Quechua, Ryukyuan, Imonda and, to a limited extent, Classical Chinese. It often overlaps with the subject of a sentence ...

of the sentence. は originates from 波 and ハ from 八. In the Sakhalin dialect of the

Ainu language Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu (), is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isola ...

, the katakana ハ can be written as small ㇵ to represent a final h sound after an ''a'' sound (アㇵ ''ah''). This, along with other extended katakana, was developed by Japanese linguists to represent sounds in Ainu not present in standard Japanese katakana. When used as a

particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...

, は is pronounced as わ a は is also pronounced as わ in some words (e.g. もののあはれ pronounced as '' mono no aware'').

Stroke order

The Hiragana は is made with three

strokes Stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop ...

: #A vertical line on the left side with a small curve. #A horizontal stroke near the center. #A vertical stroke on the right at the center of the second stroke followed by a loop near the end. The Katakana ハ is made with two strokes: #A straight stroke from the top pointing towards the bottom left. #Another straight stroke going the opposite way, i.e. from the top to the bottom right The hiragana は is read as "wa" when it represents a particle.

Other communicative representations

* Full Braille representation * Computer encodings

References

Specific kana {{Cite web, url=https://nihongoichiban.com/2011/10/03/paticle-%E3%81%AF-wa/, title=Particle は (wa), last=Soergel, first=Nicolas, date=3 October 2011, website=Nihongo Ichiban

Stroke order

Other communicative representations

See also

References