を, in

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", ...

, or ヲ in

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 ...

, is one of the Japanese

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 represents one mora. Historically, both are phonemically , reflected in the

Nihon-shiki , romanized as in the system itself, is a romanization system for transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. Among the major romanization systems for Japanese, it is the most regular one and has an almost one-to-one rel ...

wo, although the contemporary

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. To This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or all language in a specific dialect—"correct" or "standard" pronunciation—or si ...

is , reflected in the

Hepburn romanization is the main system of Romanization of Japanese, romanization for the Japanese language. The system was originally published in 1867 by American Christian missionary and physician James Curtis Hepburn as the standard in the first edition of h ...

and

Kunrei-shiki romanization , also known as the Monbusho system (named after the endonym for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) or MEXT system, is the Cabinet of Japan, Cabinet-ordered romanization system for transcribing the Japanese langu ...

o. Thus it is pronounced identically to the kana '' o''. Despite this phonemic merger, the kana ''wo'' is sometimes regarded as a distinct phoneme from /o/, represented as /wo/, to account for historical pronunciation and for orthographic purposes.

Modern usage

In the 1946 orthographic reforms, を was largely replaced by お. In Japanese, this kana is used almost exclusively for 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 ...

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 , the mora is pronounced by almost all modern speakers. Singers may pronounce it with the as a stylistic effect. Apart from some literate speakers who have revived oas a spelling pronunciation, though, this sound is extinct in the modern spoken language. Some non-standard dialectal Japanese still pronounce it o notably dialects in the

Ehime Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku. Ehime Prefecture has a population of 1,334,841 and a geographic area of 5,676 km2 (2,191 sq mi). Ehime Prefecture borders Kagawa Prefecture to the northeast, Toku ...

. In

Romaji The romanization of Japanese is the use of Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as . Japanese is normally written in a combination of logogram, logographic characters borrowe ...

, the kana is

transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...

variably as or , with the former being faithful to standard pronunciation, but the latter avoiding confusion with お and オ, and being in line with the structure of the ''

gojūon In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (''gojū'') in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are dis ...

''. is transliterated as ' in Modified Hepburn and Kunrei and as ' in Traditional Hepburn and

Nippon-shiki , romanized as in the system itself, is a romanization system for transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. Among the major romanization systems for Japanese, it is the most regular one and has an almost one-to-one rel ...

. Katakana ヲ can sometimes be combined with a dakuten, ヺ, to represent a sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to do this as this usage has largely fallen into disuse. The digraph ヴォ is used far more frequently to represent the /vo/ sound. Hiragana を is still used in several Okinawan orthographies for the mora ; in the Ryukyu University system, it is , whereas お is . Katakana ヲ is used in Ainu for .

Modern usage

Stroke order

Other communicative representations

References