A (kana)

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The hiragana あ.

The katakana ア.

	kana - gojūon
n	wa	ra	ya	ma	ha	na	ta	sa	ka	a
tsu	wi	ri		mi	hi	ni	chi	shi	ki	i
゛		ru	yu	mu	fu	nu	tsu	su	ku	u
ー	we	re		me	he	ne	te	se	ke	e
	wo	ro	yo	mo	ho	no	to	so	ko	o

あ in hiragana or ア in katakana (romanised a) is one of the Japanese kana that each respresent one mora. 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.

The pronunciation is normally transcribed [a]; more precisely, it is [a̟] or [ɑ̠].

Form	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal a/i/u/e/o (あ行 a-gyō)	a	あ	ア
	aa, ah ā	ああ, あぁ あー	アア, アァ アー

[edit] Variant forms

Scaled-down versions of the kana (ぁ, ァ) are used to express morae foreign to the Japanese language, such as ファ (fa).

[edit] 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.)

[edit] Strokes