Ra (

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 ...

: ら;

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 ...

: ラ) 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 ...

, which each represent one mora. Both versions are written with two strokes and have origins in the character 良; both characters represent the sound . The Ainu language uses a small katakana ㇻ to represent a final ''r'' sound after an ''a'' sound (アㇻ ''ar''). The combination of an R-column kana letter 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 ...

゜- ら゚ in hiragana, and ラ゚ in katakana was introduced to represent ain the early 20th century.

Stroke order

Other communicative representations

* Full Braille representation * Computer encodings

References

*The Compact Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary, ( Andrew N Nelson, John H Haig)

Tuttle Publishing Tuttle Publishing, originally the Charles E. Tuttle Company, is a book publishing company that includes Tuttle, Periplus Editions, and Journey Editions.

, 1999 {{DEFAULTSORT:Ra (Kana) Specific kana

Stroke order

Other communicative representations

See also

References