Ko (kana)

こ, in hiragana, or コ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. Both represent IPA: [ko]. The shape of these kana comes from the kanji 己.

This character may be supplemented by a dakuten; it becomes ご in hiragana, ゴ in katakana, and go in Hepburn romanization. Also, the pronunciation is affected, transforming into [ɡo] in initial positions, and varying between [ŋo] and [ɣo] in the middle of words.

A handakuten (゜) does not occur with ko in normal Japanese text, but it may be used by linguists to indicate a nasal pronunciation [ŋo].

Form	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal k- (か行 ka-gyō)	ko	こ	コ
	kou koo kō	こう こお こー	コウ コオ コー
Addition dakuten g- (が行 ga-gyō)	go	ご	ゴ
	gou goo gō	ごう ごお ごー	ゴウ ゴオ ゴー

Stroke order

File:Hiragana こ stroke order animation.gif Stroke order in writing こ

File:Katakana コ stroke order animation.gif Stroke order in writing コ

File:こ-bw.png

Stroke order in writing こ

File:コ-bw.png

Stroke order in writing コ

Other communicative representations

• Computer encodings

Character	こ		コ		ｺ		ご		ゴ
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER KO		KATAKANA LETTER KO		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER KO		HIRAGANA LETTER GO		KATAKANA LETTER GO
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	12371	U+3053	12467	U+30B3	65402	U+FF7A	12372	U+3054	12468	U+30B4
UTF-8	227 129 147	E3 81 93	227 130 179	E3 82 B3	239 189 186	EF BD BA	227 129 148	E3 81 94	227 130 180	E3 82 B4
Numeric character reference	こ	こ	コ	コ	ｺ	ｺ	ご	ご	ゴ	ゴ
Shift JIS	130 177	82 B1	131 82	83 52	186	BA	130 178	82 B2	131 83	83 53

• Braille

こ / コ in Japanese Braille
こ / コ ko	ご / ゴ go	こう / コー kō/kou	ごう / ゴー gō/gou	Other kana based on Braille こ
				きょ / キョ kyo	ぎょ / ギョ gyo	きょう / キョー kyō/kyou	ぎょう / ギョー gyō/gyou

• Japanese semaphore

The Wabun code for こ or コ is －－－－.

See also

• Koto (kana)