U+30A2 "ア" Katakana Letter A Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
ア
U+30A2 "ア" Katakana Letter A is a fundamental character in the Japanese writing system, representing the vowel sound "a" and serving as the first character in the katakana syllabary, which is primarily used for transcribing foreign loanwords, onomatopoeia, and emphatic terms from languages like English. Originating from a simplified form of the kanji 阿, its phonetic role is identical to its hiragana counterpart あ, but it is distinguished by its angular, stroke-based shape typical of katakana script. This character is encoded in the Unicode Standard under the Katakana block and is essential for creating a wide range of Japanese text, including words such as アメリカ (America) and アジア (Asia).
General Properties
| Code Point | U+30A2 |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Katakana Letter A |
| Block | Katakana |
| General Category | Other Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ア |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ア |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE3 0x82 0xA2 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x30A2 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x000030A2 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u30a2 |