Wo (kana)

を, in hiragana, or ヲ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. Historically, both are phonemically , reflected in the Nihon-shiki wo, although the contemporary pronunciation is , reflected in the Hepburn romanization and Kunrei-shiki romanization 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 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 [w], as a stylistic effect. Apart from some literate speakers who have revived [wo] as a spelling pronunciation, though, this sound is extinct in the modern spoken language. Some non-standard dialectal Japanese still pronounce it [wo], notably dialects in the Ehime Prefecture.

In Romaji, the kana is transliterated variably as Template:Angbr or Template:Angbr, 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. is transliterated as in Modified Hepburn and Kunrei and as in Traditional Hepburn and Nippon-shiki.

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.

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 ; in the Ryukyu University system, it is , whereas お is . Katakana ヲ is used in Ainu for .

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing を Stroke order in writing を

Stroke order in writing ヲ Stroke order in writing ヲ

File:を-bw.png

Stroke order in writing を

File:ヲ-bw.png

Stroke order in writing ヲ

Other communicative representations

• Full Braille representation

を / ヲ in Japanese Braille
を / ヲ wo	をう / ヲー wō	ヺ vo	ヺー vō
Template:Braille cell	Template:Braille cell	Template:Braille cell	Template:Braille cell

• Computer encodings