The Last Three Kana: わ, を, and ん

The end of the chart

Yesterday you did the R row — らりるれろ — and met the r/l ambiguity, where ら can sound like "la" and り can sound like "ri" depending on the speaker. Today you finish. Three kana left: わ, を, ん.

わ — the W that isn't quite a W

わ is typed wa. That's it. No ambiguity.

わたし（わたし）— I, me

かわ（かわ）— river

わかる（わかる）— to understand

The old kana chart had ゐ and ゑ — wi and we — but they fell out of use. Modern Japanese uses only わ from the W row. If you see ゐ in an old text, it's a historical artefact, not something you need to type.

を — the particle that only does one job

を is typed wo on most keyboards. Some IMEs also accept o, and on a phone flick keyboard you'll usually find it in the わ position.

Here's the thing about を: it is never a word on its own. It exists only as a particle, marking the direct object of a verb.

みずをのむ（みずをのむ）— to drink water

ほんをよむ（ほんをよむ）— to read a book

Notice the pattern: object を verb. The を tells you what the verb is acting on. In romaji you'll see it written "wo" in careful typing, but pronounced "o" — same sound as お. They are different kana with the same pronunciation, and only context tells you which is which.

If you're in a chat in your city and someone types を, they're marking an object. That's all it ever does.

ん — the only kana that is never a syllable

ん is typed nn. Two n's. This trips people up because a single n usually starts a syllable like な or に.

こんばんは（こんばんは）— good evening

にほん（にほん）— Japan

ん is the only kana that cannot begin a word and cannot form a syllable by itself. It's a nasal sound that attaches to the syllable before it. In こんばんは, you have ko-n-ba-n-wa. The ん is doing the closing work.

Type nn and you get ん. Type n followed by a vowel and you get な行. This is why the double-n matters.

Putting it together

Here's a sentence you can type right now:

わたしはにほんごをべんきょうします。

わたし（わたし）— I は（は）— topic marker にほんご（にほんご）— Japanese language を（を）— object marker べんきょうします（べんきょうします）— to study

I study Japanese.

Type it out. わたし → w-a-t-a-s-h-i. は → h-a. にほんご → n-i-h-o-n-n-g-o. を → w-o. べんきょうします → b-e-n-k-y-o-u-s-h-i-m-a-s-u.

That last one has a long vowel — きょう is k-y-o-u, and the う extends the ょ sound. You'll see this pattern everywhere in Japanese.

What you've actually done

You've learned all 46 basic kana. あ through ん. The full chart.

That's not nothing. Most people who "study Japanese" never get this far because they skip the boring part. You didn't. You can now read any hiragana word, even if you don't know what it means yet.

But there's one thing missing. You can type がっこう and get がっこう, but you can't yet explain why it has that small っ in the middle. You can type ちょっと and get ちょっと, but the double-t trick is still a mystery keystroke.

Tomorrow that ends.

A note on を in the wild

If you're reading something in your country or chatting with someone online, を will show up constantly. It's one of the most common particles in the language. You'll see it in menus, in emails, in tweets. It never changes. It never means anything else. Learn it once and you're done.

Same with ん. Once you can type nn without thinking, you'll stop noticing it. That's the goal.