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を, in hiragana, or ヲ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. Historically, both are phonemically /wo/, reflected in the Nihon-shiki wo, although the contemporary pronunciation is [o] , reflected in the Hepburn romanization and Kunrei-shiki romanization[1] 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.
wo | |||
---|---|---|---|
| |||
transliteration | (w)o | ||
hiragana origin | 遠 | ||
katakana origin | 乎 | ||
Man'yōgana | 乎 呼 遠 鳥 怨 越 少 小 尾 麻 男 緒 雄 | ||
spelling kana | 尾張のヲ (W)owari no "(w)o" | ||
unicode | U+3092, U+30F2 | ||
braille | ![]() |
Modern usage
editIn the 1946 orthographic reforms, を was largely replaced by お. In Japanese, this kana is used almost exclusively for a particle 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 [wo], the mora is pronounced [o] by almost all modern speakers. Singers may pronounce it with the [w], as a stylistic effect. Apart from some literate speakers who have revived [wo] as a spelling pronunciation[citation needed], though, this [w] sound is extinct in the modern spoken language. Some non-standard dialectal Japanese still pronounce it [wo], notably dialects in the Ehime Prefecture.[citation needed]
In Romaji, the kana is transliterated variably as ⟨o⟩ or ⟨wo⟩, 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. を is transliterated as o in Modified Hepburn and Kunrei and as wo in Traditional Hepburn and Nippon-shiki.
Katakana ヲ can sometimes be combined with a dakuten, ヺ, to represent a /vo/ 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.
Form | Rōmaji | Hiragana | Katakana |
---|---|---|---|
Normal w- (わ行 wa-gyō) |
(w)o | を | ヲ |
Hiragana を is still used in several Okinawan orthographies for the mora /o~wo/; in the Ryukyu University system it is /o/, whereas お is /ʔo/. Katakana ヲ is used in Ainu for /wo/.
Stroke order
editOther communicative representations
editJapanese radiotelephony alphabet | Wabun code |
尾張のヲ Wowari no "Wo" |
Japanese Navy Signal Flag | Japanese semaphore | Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling) | Braille dots-35 Japanese Braille |
- Full Braille representation
を / ヲ in Japanese Braille | |||
---|---|---|---|
を / ヲ wo |
をう / ヲー wō |
ヺ vo |
ヺー vō |
Preview | を | ヲ | ヲ | ㋾ | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | HIRAGANA LETTER WO | KATAKANA LETTER WO | HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER WO | CIRCLED KATAKANA WO | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 12434 | U+3092 | 12530 | U+30F2 | 65382 | U+FF66 | 13054 | U+32FE |
UTF-8 | 227 130 146 | E3 82 92 | 227 131 178 | E3 83 B2 | 239 189 166 | EF BD A6 | 227 139 190 | E3 8B BE |
GB 18030 | 164 242 | A4 F2 | 165 242 | A5 F2 | 132 49 150 50 | 84 31 96 32 | 129 57 214 50 | 81 39 D6 32 |
Numeric character reference | を |
を |
ヲ |
ヲ |
ヲ |
ヲ |
㋾ |
㋾ |
Shift JIS[2] | 130 240 | 82 F0 | 131 146 | 83 92 | 166 | A6 | ||
EUC-JP[3] | 164 242 | A4 F2 | 165 242 | A5 F2 | 142 166 | 8E A6 | ||
EUC-KR[4] / UHC[5] | 170 242 | AA F2 | 171 242 | AB F2 | ||||
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[6] | 198 246 | C6 F6 | 199 172 | C7 AC | ||||
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[7] | 199 121 | C7 79 | 199 238 | C7 EE |
Preview | 𛅒 | 𛅦 | ヺ | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL WO | KATAKANA LETTER SMALL WO | KATAKANA LETTER VO | |||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 110930 | U+1B152 | 110950 | U+1B166 | 12538 | U+30FA |
UTF-8 | 240 155 133 146 | F0 9B 85 92 | 240 155 133 166 | F0 9B 85 A6 | 227 131 186 | E3 83 BA |
UTF-16 | 55340 56658 | D82C DD52 | 55340 56678 | D82C DD66 | 12538 | 30FA |
GB 18030 | 147 54 132 52 | 93 36 84 34 | 147 54 134 52 | 93 36 86 34 | 129 57 167 56 | 81 39 A7 38 |
Numeric character reference | 𛅒 |
𛅒 |
𛅦 |
𛅦 |
ヺ |
ヺ |
Shift JIS (KanjiTalk 7)[8] | 136 109 | 88 6D | ||||
Shift JIS-2004[9] | 132 149 | 84 95 | ||||
EUC-JIS-2004[10] | 167 245 | A7 F5 |
References
edit- ^ https://www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/sisaku/joho/joho/kijun/naikaku/roma/honbun.html [bare URL]
- ^ Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
- ^ Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
- ^ Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
- ^ Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
- ^ Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
- ^ van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.
- ^ Apple Computer (2005-04-05) [1995-04-15]. "Map (external version) from Mac OS Japanese encoding to Unicode 2.1 and later". Unicode Consortium.
- ^ Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "Shift_JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 1) vs Unicode mapping table".
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "EUC-JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 3) vs Unicode mapping table".
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)