Wo (hiragana: ãÂÂ, katakana: ã²) is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. Historically, both are phonemically , reflected in the Nihon-shiki wo, although the contemporary pronunciation is , reflected in the Hepburn romanization and Kunrei-shiki romanization o. Thus it is pronounced identically to the kana o. Despite this phonemic merger, the kana wo is sometimes regarded as a distinct phoneme from /o/, represented as /wo/, to account for historical pronunciation and for orthographic purposes.
In the 1946 orthographic reforms, ã was largely replaced by ãÂÂ. In Japanese, this kana is used almost exclusively for a particle for both forms; therefore, the katakana form (ã²) is rare in everyday language, mostly seen in all-katakana text. A "wo" sound is usually represented as ãÂÂã or ã¦ã© instead.
Despite originally representing , the mora is pronounced by almost all modern speakers. Singers may pronounce it with the [w], as a stylistic effect. Apart from some literate speakers who have revived [wo] as a spelling pronunciation, though, this sound is extinct in the modern spoken language. Some non-standard dialectal Japanese still pronounce it [wo], notably dialects in the Ehime Prefecture.
In Romaji, the kana is transliterated variably as or , with the former being faithful to standard pronunciation, but the latter avoiding confusion with ã and ãª, and being in line with the structure of the gojà «on. is transliterated as ' in Modified Hepburn and Kunrei and as ' in Traditional Hepburn and Nippon-shiki.
Katakana ã² can sometimes be combined with a dakuten, ãº, to represent a sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to do this as this usage has largely fallen into disuse. The digraph ã´ã© is used far more frequently to represent the /vo/ sound.
Hiragana ã is still used in several Okinawan orthographies for the mora ; in the Ryukyu University system, it is , whereas ã is . Katakana ã² is used in Ainu for .