Ra (

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", ...

: ら;

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 ...

: ラ) 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 ...

, which each represent one

mora Mora may refer to: People * José Maria Mora (1847–1926), Cuban-American photographer, often credited as "Mora" * Mora (singer) (born 1996), a Puerto Rican singer * Mora (surname), a Spanish name (includes a list of people with the name) Plac ...

. Both versions are written with two strokes and have origins in the character 良; both characters represent the sound . 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 ...

uses a small katakana ㇻ to represent a final ''r'' sound after an ''a'' sound (アㇻ ''ar''). The combination of an R-column kana letter with

handakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese language, Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a Mora (linguistics), mora should be pronounced Voice (phonetics), voiced, for instance, on sounds that ...

゜- ら゚ in hiragana, and ラ゚ in katakana was introduced to represent ain the early 20th century.

Stroke order

Other communicative representations

* Full Braille representation * Computer encodings

References

*The Compact Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary, ( Andrew N Nelson, John H Haig)

Tuttle Publishing Tuttle Publishing, originally the Charles E. Tuttle Company, is a book publishing company that includes Tuttle, Periplus Editions, and Journey Editions.

, 1999 {{DEFAULTSORT:Ra (Kana) Specific kana

Stroke order

Other communicative representations

See also

References