Ya (
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 ...
: や,
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 ...
: ヤ) 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 written in three strokes, while the katakana is written in two. Both represent . Their shapes have origins in the character 也.
When small and preceded by an -i kana, this kana represents a
palatalization of the preceding consonant sound with the vowel (see
yōon
The , also written as ''yōon'', is a feature of the Japanese language in which a mora is formed with an added sound, i.e., palatalized, or (more rarely in the modern language) with an added sound, i.e. labialized.
''Yōon'' are represented i ...
).
や can be used by itself as a
grammatical particle to connect words in a nonexhaustive list (see
Japanese particles#ya).
Stroke order
Other communicative representations
* Full Braille representation
The yōon characters ゃ and ャ are encoded in Japanese Braille by prefixing "-a" kana (e.g.
Ka,
Sa) with a yōon braille indicator, which can be combined with the "Dakuten" or "Handakuten" braille indicators for the appropriate consonant sounds.
*
Computer encodings
References
Specific kana
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