U+3042 "あ" Hiragana Letter A Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
あ
U+3042 "あ" Hiragana Letter A is a fundamental symbol in the Japanese writing system, representing the vowel sound "a" in the hiragana script, which is a phonetic syllabary used primarily for native Japanese words and grammatical elements. Derived from the cursive form of the Chinese character "安," this character is often the first taught in Japanese language learning due to its simple shape and essential role in constructing syllables and words. It appears frequently in common vocabulary, such as in the greeting "ありがとう" (arigatou, meaning thank you), making it a cornerstone for beginners mastering the fifty-sound chart known as the gojuon.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+3042 |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Hiragana Letter A |
| Block | Hiragana |
| General Category | Other Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | あ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | あ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE3 0x81 0x82 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x3042 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x00003042 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u3042 |