は and ハ
Pronunciation
“HA” sound in "Heart"
When used as the は PARTICLE,
“WA” in “Water”
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は Memorization Story
For the hiragana は, we imagine our friend けに reaching out for a flower. Though we could try to make this a noodle, it’s a bit longer and straighter than the other noodles, so when this set of 3 strokes shows up, we’ll go with a flower, with a petal floating away from it. WHY a flower? Because in Japanese, flower is はな. はな. So we can see right there in that word the difference in the strokes.
ハ Memorization Story
Our story for the Katakana ハ is that someone STOLE the middle line in H, and you see them laughing HA HA HA! As they run away with it.
Writing
The loop in the 3rd stroke of the hiragana は should be somewhat smushed down, like mochi. Not a perfect circle. When drawing hiragana, another fun tip for better handwriting, is that you should draw each stroke as if it is aiming at the next. For FINAL strokes, since Japanese is usually written in vertical lines, instead of left to right like English, it will often point DOWN. That’s the case with は as well.
Font Examples
は ハ
は ハ
は ハ
は ハ
は ハ
Typing
Hiragana は
Type the letters “ha”.
Katakana ハ
Type "ha" and press the F7 key, or press spacebar until the katakana appears.
Word(s)
はな
flower
ハト
pigeon
Historical Form
Hiragana
波→は
HISTORICAL VERSION
Katakana
八→ハ
PART BORROWED
