ha
hiragana katakana
transliteration	ha, wa
hiragana origin	波
katakana origin	八
Man'yōgana	八 方 芳 房 半 伴 倍 泊 波 婆 破 薄 播 幡 羽 早 者 速 葉 歯
Voiced Man'yōgana	伐 婆 磨 魔
spelling kana	はがきのハ Hagaki no "ha"
unicode	U+306F, U+30CF
braille
Note: This syllable was historically pronounced as "Pa".

Ha (hiragana: は, katakana: ハ) is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represent one mora. Both represent [ha]. They are also used as a grammatical particle (in such cases, they denote [wa], 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).^[1] 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

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
はがきのハ Hagaki no "Ha"	▄▄▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ⓘ

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-136 Japanese Braille

• Full Braille representation

は / ハ in Japanese Braille
は / ハ ha	ば / バ ba	ぱ / パ pa	はあ / ハー hā	ばあ / バー bā	ぱあ / パー pā
Other kana based on Braille は
ひゃ / ヒャ hya	びゃ / ビャ bya	ぴゃ / ピャ pya	ひゃあ / ヒャー hyā	びゃあ / ビャー byā	ぴゃあ / ピャー pyā

• Computer encodings