る, 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 ル 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 represent one
mora. The hiragana is written in one stroke; the katakana in two. Both represent the sound . The
Ainu language uses a small katakana ㇽ to represent a final ''r'' sound after an ''u'' sound (ウㇽ ''ur''). 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 ...
゜- る゚ in hiragana, and ル゚ in katakana was introduced to represent
uin the early 20th century.
Stroke order
The hiragana for ''ru'' (る) is made with one stroke, and its katakana form (ル) is made with two.
る (hiragana) begins with a horizontal stroke to the right, followed by a slightly longer, angular stroke going down and to the left. Finally, a curve and loop are added to the bottom that somewhat resembles the hiragana ''no'' (の). The character as a whole is visually similar to the hiragana for ''ro'' (ろ).
ル (katakana) is made by first making a curved stroke going down and to the left, and is followed by a stroke that first goes straight down, and then a curved line going up and to the right.
Other communicative representations
* Full Braille representation
*
Computer encodings
See also
*
Japanese phonology
The phonology of Japanese features about 15 consonant phonemes, the cross-linguistically typical five-vowel system of , and a relatively simple phonotactic distribution of phonemes allowing few consonant clusters. It is traditionally described ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ru (Kana)
Specific kana