Wo (kana)

を, in hiragana, or ヲ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. The combination of an W-column kana letter with ゛を゙ in hiragana was introduced to respresent [vo] in the 19th century and 20th century.

wo
hiragana
 katakana
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"
unicodeU+3092, U+30F2
braille
kana gojūon
warayamahanatasakaa
wiri mihinichishikii
ruyumufunutsusukuu
were mehenetesekee
woroyomohonotosokoo
n

sokuon · dakuten · chōonpu

yori · koto · hentaigana

Modern usage

In Japanese, this kana is used almost exclusively for a particle; therefore, 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.

Despite originally representing [ɰo], the syllable is pronounced [o] by almost all modern speakers. Singers may pronounce it with the [w], as may those attempting to emphasize the syllable for clarity. Apart from some literate speakers who have revived [wo] as a spelling pronunciation, though, the onglide is extinct in the modern spoken language.

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. 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. The combination ヴォ is used far more frequently to represent the /vo/ sound.

A "wo" sound is usually 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

Hiragana を is still used in several Okinawan orthographies for the syllable /o~wo/; in the Ryukyu University system it is /o/, whereas お is /ʔo/. Katakana ヲ is used in Ainu for /wo/.

Stroke order
Stroke order in writing を
Stroke order in writing ヲ
Stroke order in writing を
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
Character information
Previewをヲｦ㋾
Unicode nameHIRAGANA LETTER WOKATAKANA LETTER WOHALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER WOCIRCLED KATAKANA WO
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode12434U+309212530U+30F265382U+FF6613054U+32FE
UTF-8227 130 146E3 82 92227 131 178E3 83 B2239 189 166EF BD A6227 139 190E3 8B BE
GB 18030164 242A4 F2165 242A5 F2132 49 150 5084 31 96 32129 57 214 5081 39 D6 32
Numeric character referenceををヲヲｦｦ㋾㋾
Shift JIS[1]130 24082 F0131 14683 92166A6
EUC-JP[2]164 242A4 F2165 242A5 F2142 1668E A6
EUC-KR[3] / UHC[4]170 242AA F2171 242AB F2
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[5]198 246C6 F6199 172C7 AC
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[6]199 121C7 79199 238C7 EE
Character information
Preview𛅒𛅦ヺ
Unicode nameHIRAGANA LETTER SMALL WOKATAKANA LETTER SMALL WOKATAKANA LETTER VO
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode110930U+1B152110950U+1B16612538U+30FA
UTF-8240 155 133 146F0 9B 85 92240 155 133 166F0 9B 85 A6227 131 186E3 83 BA
UTF-1655340 56658D82C DD5255340 56678D82C DD661253830FA
GB 18030147 54 132 5293 36 84 34147 54 134 5293 36 86 34129 57 167 5681 39 A7 38
Numeric character reference𛅒𛅒𛅦𛅦ヺヺ
Shift JIS (KanjiTalk 7)[7]136 10988 6D
Shift JIS-2004[8]132 14984 95
EUC-JIS-2004[9]167 245A7 F5

References
  1. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
  2. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
  3. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
  4. Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
  5. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
  6. van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.
  7. Apple Computer (2005-04-05) [1995-04-15]. "Map (external version) from Mac OS Japanese encoding to Unicode 2.1 and later". Unicode Consortium.
  8. Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "Shift_JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 1) vs Unicode mapping table".
  9. Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "EUC-JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 3) vs Unicode mapping table".
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