Wo (kana)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hiragana	Katakana
Transliteration:	o, wo
Hiragana Man'yōgana:	遠
Katakana Man'yōgana:	乎
Unicode:
kana - gojūon n wa ra ya ma ha na ta sa ka a tsu wi ri mi hi ni chi shi ki i ゛ ru yu mu fu nu tsu su ku u ー we re me he ne te se ke e wo ro yo mo ho no to so ko o

を, in hiragana, or ヲ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represent one mora.

[edit] Modern usage

This kana is used almost exclusively as a particle; as such, the katakana form (ヲ) is fairly uncommon in everyday language — mostly used as a stand-in for its hiragana counterpart in texts that need to be written entirely in katakana.

Generally, it represents (IPA) /o/, although some dialects retain the pronunciation /ɰo/^{[citation needed]}, which is also often used in songs. It is also occasionally pronounced this way when stressing the particle, especially to clarify when someone misunderstands what has been said.

It is transliterated variably as <o> or <wo>, with the former being faithful to standard pronunciation but the latter avoiding confusion with お and オ.

A "wo" sound is represented in katakana as ウォ instead. For example, ウォークマン (wōkuman, "Walkman") and ウォッカ (wokka, "vodka").

Form	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal w- (わ行 wa-gyō)	wo	を	ヲ

[edit] Stroke order

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