Ru (kana)

る, in hiragana, or ル in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represent one mora. The hiragana is written in one stroke; the katakana in two. Both represent the sound [ɾɯ] (listen). The Ainu language uses a small katakana ㇽ to represent a final r sound after an u sound (ウㇽ ur). The combination of an R-column kana letter with ゜る゚ in hiragana, and ル゚ in katakana was introduced to represent [lu] in the early 20th century.

Form	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal r- (ら行 ra-gyō)	Ru, Lu	る	ル
	ruu, luu rū, lū	るう, るぅ るー, る〜	ルウ, ルゥ ルー, ル〜

ru
hiragana katakana
transliteration	ru, lu
hiragana origin	留
katakana origin	流
Man'yōgana	留 流 類
spelling kana	留守居のル Rusui no "ru"
unicode	U+308B, U+30EB
braille

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing る

Stroke order in writing ル

The hiragana for ru (る) is made with one stroke, and its katakana form (ル) is made with two.

る (hiragana) begins with a horizontal stroke to the right, followed by a slightly longer, angular stroke going down and to the left. Finally, a curve and loop are added to the bottom that somewhat resembles the hiragana no (の). The character as a whole is visually similar to the hiragana for ro (ろ).

ル (katakana) is made by first making a curved stroke going down and to the left, and is followed by a stroke that first goes straight down, and then a curved line going up and to the right.

Stroke order in writing る

Stroke order in writing ル

Other communicative representations

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
留守居のル Rusui no "Ru"	▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-145 Japanese Braille

• Full Braille representation

る / ル in Japanese Braille
る / ル ru	るう / ルー rū	Other kana based on Braille る
		りゅ / リュ ryu	りゅう / リュー ryū

• Computer encodings

Character information

Preview	る		ル		ﾙ		ㇽ		㋸
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER RU		KATAKANA LETTER RU		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER RU		KATAKANA LETTER SMALL RU		CIRCLED KATAKANA RU
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	12427	U+308B	12523	U+30EB	65433	U+FF99	12797	U+31FD	13048	U+32F8
UTF-8	227 130 139	E3 82 8B	227 131 171	E3 83 AB	239 190 153	EF BE 99	227 135 189	E3 87 BD	227 139 184	E3 8B B8
Numeric character reference	る	る	ル	ル	ﾙ	ﾙ	ㇽ	ㇽ	㋸	㋸
Shift JIS (plain)[1]	130 233	82 E9	131 139	83 8B	217	D9
Shift JIS-2004[2]	130 233	82 E9	131 139	83 8B	217	D9	131 250	83 FA
EUC-JP (plain)[3]	164 235	A4 EB	165 235	A5 EB	142 217	8E D9
EUC-JIS-2004[4]	164 235	A4 EB	165 235	A5 EB	142 217	8E D9	166 252	A6 FC
GB 18030[5]	164 235	A4 EB	165 235	A5 EB	132 49 155 51	84 31 9B 33	129 57 189 55	81 39 BD 37
EUC-KR[6] / UHC[7]	170 235	AA EB	171 235	AB EB
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[8]	198 239	C6 EF	199 165	C7 A5
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[9]	199 114	C7 72	199 231	C7 E7

See also

• Japanese phonology

References

1. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
2. Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "Shift_JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 1) vs Unicode mapping table".
3. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
4. Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "EUC-JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 3) vs Unicode mapping table".
5. Standardization Administration of China (SAC) (2005-11-18). GB 18030-2005: Information Technology—Chinese coded character set.
6. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
7. Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
8. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
9. van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.