U+3041 "ぁ" Hiragana Letter Small A Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
ぁ
U+3041 "ぁ" Hiragana Letter Small A is a specialized glyph in the Japanese hiragana syllabary, representing a smaller, subscript version of the standard character "あ" (a). It is primarily used in modern Japanese orthography to indicate a prolonged or palatalized vowel sound, often appearing in loanwords, onomatopoeia, or informal writing to suggest a softer or abbreviated pronunciation, such as in "ふぁ" (fa) or "ぃ" combinations. Unlike its full-sized counterpart, this small character does not stand alone as a syllable but modifies the preceding consonant sound, functioning as a diacritical mark within the kana system to expand phonetic expression beyond traditional Japanese sounds.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+3041 |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Hiragana Letter Small A |
| Block | Hiragana |
| General Category | Other Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ぁ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ぁ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE3 0x81 0x81 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x3041 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x00003041 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u3041 |