Ha (kana)

Ha (hiragana: は, katakana: ハ) is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represent one mora. Both represent. They are also used as a grammatical particle (in such cases, they denote, 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). 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).

Stroke order
The Hiragana は is made with three strokes:
 * 1) A vertical line on the left side with a small curve.
 * 2) A horizontal stroke near the center.
 * 3) A vertical stroke on the right at the center of the second stroke followed by a loop near the end.

The Katakana ハ is made with two strokes:
 * 1) A straight stroke from the top pointing towards the bottom left.
 * 2) Another straight stroke going the opposite way, i.e. from the top to the bottom right

The hiragana は is read as "wa" when it represents a particle.

Other communicative representations

 * Full Braille representation


 * Computer encodings