Yo (kana)

よ, in hiragana or ヨ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. The hiragana is made in two strokes, while the katakana in three. Both represent [jo].

yo
hiragana katakana
transliteration	yo
hiragana origin	与
katakana origin	與
Man'yōgana	用 容 欲 夜 与 余 四 世 代 吉
spelling kana	吉野のヨ Yoshino no "yo"
unicode	U+3088, U+30E8
braille
Note: These Man'yōgana originally represented morae with one of two different vowel sounds, which merged in later pronunciation

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

In mathematics, よ is sometimes used to represent the Yoneda embedding.^[2]

Forms	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal y- (や行 ya-gyō)	yo	よ	ヨ
	you yoo yō	よう, よぅ よお, よぉ よー	ヨウ, ヨゥ ヨオ, ヨォ ヨー

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing よ

Stroke order in writing ヨ

Stroke order in writing よ

Stroke order in writing ヨ

Other communicative representations

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
吉野のヨ Yoshino no "Yo"	▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ⓘ

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-345 Japanese Braille

• Full Braille representation

よ / ヨ in Japanese Braille
よ / ヨ yo	よう / ヨー yō	ょ/ョ Yōon*	゛ょ/゛ョ Dakuten + Yōon*	゜ょ/゜ョ Handakuten + Yōon*

* The yōon characters ょ and ョ are encoded in Japanese Braille by prefixing "-o" kana (e.g. Ko, So) 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	よ		ヨ		ﾖ		㋵
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER YO		KATAKANA LETTER YO		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER YO		CIRCLED KATAKANA YO
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	12424	U+3088	12520	U+30E8	65430	U+FF96	13045	U+32F5
UTF-8	227 130 136	E3 82 88	227 131 168	E3 83 A8	239 190 150	EF BE 96	227 139 181	E3 8B B5
Numeric character reference	よ	よ	ヨ	ヨ	ﾖ	ﾖ	㋵	㋵
Shift JIS[3]	130 230	82 E6	131 136	83 88	214	D6
EUC-JP[4]	164 232	A4 E8	165 232	A5 E8	142 214	8E D6
GB 18030[5]	164 232	A4 E8	165 232	A5 E8	132 49 155 48	84 31 9B 30
EUC-KR[6] / UHC[7]	170 232	AA E8	171 232	AB E8
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[8]	198 236	C6 EC	199 162	C7 A2
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[9]	199 111	C7 6F	199 228	C7 E4

Character information

Preview	ょ		ョ		ｮ
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL YO		KATAKANA LETTER SMALL YO		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER SMALL YO
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	12423	U+3087	12519	U+30E7	65390	U+FF6E
UTF-8	227 130 135	E3 82 87	227 131 167	E3 83 A7	239 189 174	EF BD AE
Numeric character reference	ょ	ょ	ョ	ョ	ｮ	ｮ
Shift JIS[3]	130 229	82 E5	131 135	83 87	174	AE
EUC-JP[4]	164 231	A4 E7	165 231	A5 E7	142 174	8E AE
GB 18030[5]	164 231	A4 E7	165 231	A5 E7	132 49 151 48	84 31 97 30
EUC-KR[6] / UHC[7]	170 231	AA E7	171 231	AB E7
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[8]	198 235	C6 EB	199 161	C7 A1
Big5 (ETEN/> / HKSCS)[9]	199 110	C7 6E	199 227	C7 E3

References

1. Jim Gleeson (2013). "Contracted sounds". Japanese Hiragana: An Introductory Japanese Language Workbook. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 9781462913978.
2. "Yoneda embedding". nLab. Retrieved 6 July 2019.
3. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
4. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
5. Standardization Administration of China (SAC) (2005-11-18). GB 18030-2005: Information Technology—Chinese coded character set.
6. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
7. Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
8. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
9. van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.

See also

• Yori (kana)