Ya (kana)

Ya (hiragana: や, katakana: ヤ) is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. The hiragana is written in three strokes, while the katakana is written in two. Both represent [ja]. Their shapes have origins in the character 也.

ya
hiragana katakana
transliteration	ya
hiragana origin	也
katakana origin	也
Man'yōgana	也 移 夜 楊 耶 野 八 矢 屋
spelling kana	大和のヤ Yamato no "ya"
unicode	U+3084, U+30E4
braille

When small and preceded by an -i kana, this kana represents a palatalization of the preceding consonant sound with the [a] vowel (see yōon).^[1]

や can be used by itself as a grammatical particle to connect words in a nonexhaustive list (see Japanese particles#ya).

Form	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal y- (や行 ya-gyō)	ya	や	ヤ
	yaa yā	やあ, やぁ やー	ヤア, ヤァ ヤー

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing や

Stroke order in writing ヤ

Stroke order in writing や

Stroke order in writing ヤ

Other communicative representations

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
大和のヤ Yamato no "Ya"	▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ⓘ

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-34 Japanese Braille

• Full Braille representation

や / ヤ in Japanese Braille
や / ヤ ya	やあ / ヤー yā	ゃ/ャ Yōon*	゛ゃ/゛ャ Dakuten + Yōon*	゜ゃ/゜ャ Handakuten + Yōon*

* The yōon characters ゃ and ャ are encoded in Japanese Braille by prefixing "-a" kana (e.g. Ka, Sa) with a yōon braille indicator, which can be combined with the "Dakuten" or "Handakuten" braille indicators for the appropriate consonant sounds.

• Computer encodings

Character information

Preview	や		ヤ		ﾔ		㋳
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER YA		KATAKANA LETTER YA		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER YA		CIRCLED KATAKANA YA
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	12420	U+3084	12516	U+30E4	65428	U+FF94	13043	U+32F3
UTF-8	227 130 132	E3 82 84	227 131 164	E3 83 A4	239 190 148	EF BE 94	227 139 179	E3 8B B3
Numeric character reference	や	や	ヤ	ヤ	ﾔ	ﾔ	㋳	㋳
Shift JIS[2]	130 226	82 E2	131 132	83 84	212	D4
EUC-JP[3]	164 228	A4 E4	165 228	A5 E4	142 212	8E D4
GB 18030[4]	164 228	A4 E4	165 228	A5 E4	132 49 154 56	84 31 9A 38
EUC-KR[5] / UHC[6]	170 228	AA E4	171 228	AB E4
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[7]	198 232	C6 E8	199 124	C7 7C
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[8]	199 107	C7 6B	199 224	C7 E0

Character information

Preview	ゃ		ャ		ｬ
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL YA		KATAKANA LETTER SMALL YA		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER SMALL YA
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	12419	U+3083	12515	U+30E3	65388	U+FF6C
UTF-8	227 130 131	E3 82 83	227 131 163	E3 83 A3	239 189 172	EF BD AC
Numeric character reference	ゃ	ゃ	ャ	ャ	ｬ	ｬ
Shift JIS[2]	130 225	82 E1	131 131	83 83	172	AC
EUC-JP[3]	164 227	A4 E3	165 227	A5 E3	142 172	8E AC
GB 18030[4]	164 227	A4 E3	165 227	A5 E3	132 49 150 56	84 31 96 38
EUC-KR[5] / UHC[6]	170 227	AA E3	171 227	AB E3
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[7]	198 231	C6 E7	199 123	C7 7B
Big5 (ETEN/> / HKSCS)[8]	199 106	C7 6A	199 223	C7 DF

References

1. Jim Gleeson (2013). "Contracted sounds". Japanese Hiragana: An Introductory Japanese Language Workbook. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 9781462913978.
2. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
3. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
4. Standardization Administration of China (SAC) (2005-11-18). GB 18030-2005: Information Technology—Chinese coded character set.
5. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
6. Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
7. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
8. van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.