Ro (kana)

ろ, in hiragana, or ロ in katakana, (romanised as ro) is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. The hiragana is written in one stroke, katakana in three. Both represent [ɾo] ^ⓘ and both originate from the Chinese character 呂. The Ainu language uses a small ㇿ to represent a final r sound after an o sound (オㇿ or). The combination of an R-column kana letter with handakuten ゜ – ろ゚ in hiragana and ロ゚ in katakana – was introduced to represent [lo] in the early 20th century.^{[according to whom?]}

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Quick Facts transliteration, hiragana origin ...

ro
hiragana katakana
transliteration	ro
hiragana origin	呂
katakana origin	呂
Man'yōgana	路 漏 呂 侶
spelling kana	ローマのロ Rōma no "ro"
unicode	U+308D, U+30ED
braille
Note: These Man'yōgana originally represented morae with one of two different vowel sounds, which merged in later pronunciation

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