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ろ and ロ

Pronunciation

These characters represent a blend between the “Lo” sound in “Low” and the “Do” sound in “Dough”.

Despite usually being written as "RO" in roman characters. 

れ Memorization Story

The hiragana ろ is the same as the character る, but WITHOUT the Ruup… Sorry, loop. We can picture him ROWING a rowboat. Row...box?

ロ Memorization Story

The square rowboat is the katakana ロ. Sorry, rowbox.

Writing

 
 

The hiragana ろ is written identically to る, just without the loop on the bottom. As I mentioned a second ago.

Squares in Japanese are written with what may feel like an odd stroke order at first. Vertical line for the 1st stroke, top to bottom in the second stroke, and closing up the box on the bottom for the 3rd.

This is identical to a kanji you’ll learn EARLY ON in your kanji journey, that means MOUTH. It looks like this 口. We use THIS LITTLE GUY to memorize him in our kanji series here on this website, and our YouTube.

Font Examples

ろ　　ロ

ろ　　ロ

ろ　　ロ

ろ　　ロ

ろ　　ロ

Typing

Hiragana ろ
Type the letters “ro”.

Katakana ロ
Type “ro” and press the F7 key, or press spacebar until the katakana appears. 

Word(s)

しろ

white

くろ

black

きいろ

yellow

カロリー

calorie(s)

 

Historical Form

Hiragana
呂→ろ

HISTORICAL VERSION

Katakana
呂→ロ

PART BORROWED

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