Ku (kana)
Character of the Japanese writing system
Ku (hiragana: く, katakana: ク) is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one mora. Both represent [kɯ] and their shapes come from the kanji 久.
This kana may have a dakuten added, transforming it into ぐ in hiragana, グ in katakana and gu in Hepburn romanization. The dakuten's addition also changes the sound of the mora represented, to [ɡɯ] in initial positions and varying between [ŋɯ] and [ɣɯ] in the middle of words.
A handakuten (゜) does not occur with ku in normal Japanese text, but it may be used by linguists to indicate a nasal pronunciation [ŋɯ].
In the Ainu language, the katakana ク can be written as small ㇰ, representing a final k sound as in アイヌイタㇰ Ainu itak (Ainu language). This was developed along with other extended katakana to represent sounds in Ainu that are not found in standard Japanese katakana.
01Other communicative representations
| Japanese radiotelephony alphabet | Wabun code |
| クラブのク Kurabu no "Ku" |
▄ ▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ⓘ |
| Japanese Navy Signal Flag | Japanese semaphore | Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling) | Braille dots-146 Japanese Braille |
- Full Braille representation
| く / ク in Japanese Braille | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| く / ク ku | ぐ / グ gu | くう / クー kū | ぐう / グー gū | Other kana based on Braille く | |||
| きゅ / キュ kyu | ぎゅ / ギュ gyu | きゅう / キュー kyū | ぎゅう / ギュー gyū | ||||
| Preview | く | ク | ｸ | ㇰ | ㋗ | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | HIRAGANA LETTER KU | KATAKANA LETTER KU | HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER KU | KATAKANA LETTER SMALL KU | CIRCLED KATAKANA KU | |||||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 12367 | U+304F | 12463 | U+30AF | 65400 | U+FF78 | 12784 | U+31F0 | 13015 | U+32D7 |
| UTF-8 | 227 129 143 | E3 81 8F | 227 130 175 | E3 82 AF | 239 189 184 | EF BD B8 | 227 135 176 | E3 87 B0 | 227 139 151 | E3 8B 97 |
| Numeric character reference | く | く | ク | ク | ｸ | ｸ | ㇰ | ㇰ | ㋗ | ㋗ |
| Shift JIS (plain) | 130 173 | 82 AD | 131 78 | 83 4E | 184 | B8 | ||||
| Shift JIS-2004 | 130 173 | 82 AD | 131 78 | 83 4E | 184 | B8 | 131 236 | 83 EC | ||
| EUC-JP (plain) | 164 175 | A4 AF | 165 175 | A5 AF | 142 184 | 8E B8 | ||||
| EUC-JIS-2004 | 164 175 | A4 AF | 165 175 | A5 AF | 142 184 | 8E B8 | 166 238 | A6 EE | ||
| GB 18030 | 164 175 | A4 AF | 165 175 | A5 AF | 132 49 152 48 | 84 31 98 30 | 129 57 188 52 | 81 39 BC 34 | ||
| EUC-KR / UHC | 170 175 | AA AF | 171 175 | AB AF | ||||||
| Big5 (non-ETEN kana) | 198 179 | C6 B3 | 199 71 | C7 47 | ||||||
| Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS) | 198 245 | C6 F5 | 199 171 | C7 AB | ||||||
| Preview | ぐ | グ | く゚ | ク゚ | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | HIRAGANA LETTER GU | KATAKANA LETTER GU | HIRAGANA LETTER BIDAKUON NGU | KATAKANA LETTER BIDAKUON NGU | ||||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 12368 | U+3050 | 12464 | U+30B0 | 12367 12442 | U+304F+309A | 12463 12442 | U+30AF+309A |
| UTF-8 | 227 129 144 | E3 81 90 | 227 130 176 | E3 82 B0 | 227 129 143 227 130 154 | E3 81 8F E3 82 9A | 227 130 175 227 130 154 | E3 82 AF E3 82 9A |
| Numeric character reference | ぐ | ぐ | グ | グ | く゚ | く゚ | ク゚ | ク゚ |
| Shift JIS (plain) | 130 174 | 82 AE | 131 79 | 83 4F | ||||
| Shift JIS-2004 | 130 174 | 82 AE | 131 79 | 83 4F | 130 247 | 82 F7 | 131 153 | 83 99 |
| EUC-JP (plain) | 164 176 | A4 B0 | 165 176 | A5 B0 | ||||
| EUC-JIS-2004 | 164 176 | A4 B0 | 165 176 | A5 B0 | 164 249 | A4 F9 | 165 249 | A5 F9 |
| GB 18030 | 164 176 | A4 B0 | 165 176 | A5 B0 | ||||
| EUC-KR / UHC | 170 176 | AA B0 | 171 176 | AB B0 | ||||
| Big5 (non-ETEN kana) | 198 180 | C6 B4 | 199 72 | C7 48 | ||||
| Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS) | 198 246 | C6 F6 | 199 172 | C7 AC | ||||
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Ku (kana)”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Hiragana く stroke order animation.gif by Sirgazil, CC0
- Katakana ク stroke order animation.gif by Sirgazil, CC0
- ク-bw.png by No machine-readable author provided. D.328 assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0
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