Ha (kana)

ha
hiragana
japanese hiragana ha
katakana
japanese katakana ha
transliterationha, wa
translit. with dakutenba
translit. with handakutenpa
hiragana origin
katakana origin
Man'yōgana八 方 芳 房 半 伴 倍 泊 波 婆 破 薄 播 幡 羽 早 者 速 葉 歯
Voiced Man'yōgana伐 婆 磨 魔
spelling kanaはがきのハ Hagaki no "ha"
unicodeU+306F, U+30CF
braille⠥
Note: This mora was historically pronounced as "pa".

Ha (hiragana: は, katakana: ハ) is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represent one mora. Both represent [ha]. They are also used as a grammatical particle (in such cases, they denote [wa], including in the greeting "kon'nichiwa") and serve as the topic marker of the sentence. は originates from 波 and ハ from 八.

In the Sakhalin dialect of the Ainu language, the katakana ハ can be written as small ㇵ to represent a final h sound after an a sound (アㇵ ah).[1] 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, は is pronounced as わ [wa]. は is also pronounced as わ in some words (e.g. もののあはれ pronounced as mono no aware).

Form Rōmaji Hiragana Katakana
Normal h-
(は行 ha-gyō)
ha
haa
はあ, はぁ
はー
ハア, ハァ
ハー
Addition dakuten b-
(ば行 ba-gyō)
ba
baa
ばあ, ばぁ
ばー
バア, バァ
バー
Addition handakuten p-
(ぱ行 pa-gyō)
pa
paa
ぱあ, ぱぁ
ぱー
パア, パァ
パー
  1. ^ "Katakana Phonetic Extensions – Test for Unicode support in Web browsers".