Wo (kana)

を, in hiragana, or ヲ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. Both are phonemically, reflected in the Nihon-shiki wo, although for phonological reasons, the actual pronunciation is , reflected in the Hepburn romanization and Kunrei-shiki Romanization o.

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 may those attempting to emphasize the mora for clarity. Apart from some literate speakers who have revived [wo] as a spelling pronunciation, though, this sound 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. を is transliterated as o in Modified Hepburn and Kunrei and as wo 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. The combination ヴォ is used far more frequently to represent the /vo/ sound.

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.

Other communicative representations

 * Full Braille representation


 * Computer encodings