Hiragana · w row
わ (wa): hiragana stroke order and pronunciation
わ is the hiragana for wa, the a sound of the w row. It is written with 2 strokes. Its katakana twin is ワ (wa).
- Romaji
- wa
- Strokes
- 2
- Listen
- Play wa
How to write わ, stroke by stroke
Each frame adds one stroke. The number sits where the stroke starts; strokes run left to right and top to bottom.
- stroke 1
- stroke 2
How to say wa
Tip: like 'wa' in 'water'
わ in a word
The course introduces わ with かわ (river).
The w row
The w row keeps one consonant and runs through the five vowels, so わ differs from its neighbours only in the vowel. Reading the row as a set fixes the pattern:
- わ waかわ (river)
- を oパン を たべる (I eat bread)
Course words written with わ
One word from the beginner word lists use わ. Each links to the list it belongs to.
- わかりましたwakarimashitaI understand / got itGreetings and polite phrases
わ in a sentence
From the beginner stories, where わ turns up in running text rather than on its own.
「わたしのだ！」
"It's mine!" from The missing phone
それで わかった。
That's when I understood. from Two o'clock at the station
Built from わ
The same sound in katakana
Stroke-order data from KanjiVG by Ulrich Apel, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.
Practice this in Open Lingo
The Open Lingo Japanese course teaches わ with tracing practice, a listening drill and spaced review, then uses it in real words within the same lesson.
Keep going
- ChartKatakana chartAll 46 basic katakana plus voiced and yōon combinations, with romaji, stroke-order diagrams, example loanwords and audio.
- Word listGreetings and polite phrasesEssential Japanese greetings and polite phrases for beginners, with hiragana, romaji, meaning and audio, taken from the Open Lingo course.
- Word listNumbersJapanese numbers for beginners: Sino-Japanese いち, に, さん, the native ひとつ, ふたつ counting set, and hundreds, thousands and 万, with audio.
- ToolNumbers 1 to 100 and converterJapanese numbers 0 to 100 in kana, kanji and romaji, a converter up to 999,999, and the rules for 4, 7, 9, sound-changing hundreds and 万.