, in

hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...

, or in

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

, is one of the Japanese

kana The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most p ...

, each of which represents one mora. The hiragana is made in four strokes, while the katakana in one. It represents the phoneme , although for phonological reasons (general scheme for group, whose only phonologic survivor to remaining is ふ: b<-p<--f-->h), the actual pronunciation is , which is why it is romanized ''fu'' in Hepburn romanization instead of ''hu'' (Korean 후 /hu/ creates the same phonetic effect as lips are projected when pronouncing "u"). Written with a

dakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing). The , ...

(ぶ, ブ), they both represent a "bu" sound, and written with

handakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing). The , c ...

(ぷ, プ) they both represent a "pu" sound. The katakana フ is frequently combined with other vowels to represent sounds in foreign words. For example, the word "file" is written in Japanese as ファイル (fairu), with ファ representing a non-native sound, ''fa''. In certain

Okinawan writing system Okinawan, spoken in Okinawa Island, was once the official language of the Ryukyu Kingdom. At the time, documents were written in kanji and hiragana, derived from Japan. Although generally agreed among linguists to be a distinct language, most ...

s, ふ/フ can be written as ふぁ, ふぃ, ふぇ to make both ''fa'', ''fi'', and ''fe'' sounds as well as representing the sounds ''hwa'', ''hwi'', and ''hwe''. In the Ryukyu University system, fa/hwa is written using the ''wa'' kana instead, ふゎ/フヮ. In the Ainu language the katakana with a handakuten プ can be written as a small ㇷ゚ to represent a final p sound. In the Sakhalin dialect, フ without a handakuten can be written as small ㇷ to represent a final h sound after an ''u'' sound (ウㇷ ''uh'').

Stroke order

Other communicative representations

References