A (Kana)

Datei:あ 教科書体.png

The hiragana あ.

あ in hiragana or ア in katakana is one of the Japanese kana that each respresent one mora. It is pronounced /a/. あ is based on the sōsho style of kanji 安, and ア is from the Radical of kanji 阿. In the modern Japanese system of alphabetical order, it is occupies the first position of the alphabet, before い. Additionally, it is the 36th letter in Iroha, after て, before さ. Its hiragana resembles the kana no combined with a cross. The Unicode for あ is U+3040, and the Unicode for ア is U+30A2.

Alternative forms

In Japanese Braille, あ or ア is represented as:

●	－
－	－
－	－

The Morse code for あ or ア, is －－・－－.

In Japanese phonetic alphabet, one would say "朝日のア" (Asahi no A.) Vorlage:Writingsystem-stub