How to type を

Help! I can’t find を anywhere… (I copy-pasted this one) How do I type it in please?

“wo”

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Thank you!! I’ve been saying it ‘o’ :pensive: so that explains it

o is the pronunciation. But it belongs in the w row that only has wa (わ) and wo (を) nowadays, but included more kana before.

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Funny thing is, I couldn’t even understand what you were asking. Like how do you type “wo”… you do it by typing “wo” :slight_smile:
I didn’t even think someone actually associates it with “o” in their head :slight_smile:

But I guess it’s quite understandable as it’s quite often pronounced similar to “o”.

Similarly to つ which is “tsu”, but I type it as “tu” or ち which is “chi” but I type it as “ti”.

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It is always pronounced exactly the same as ‘o’
The only time you would pronounce the ‘w’ part is if you are talking about the character itself, which of course would only be in a discussion such as this one.

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Sure, it is definitely not pronounced as “wo/vo”, but there is a difference between を and regular お. You can’t just pronounce を the same as お. It is a very different sound.

You absolutely can. It’s exactly the same sound, but a different use.

Again, you can do that, and people wouldn’t generally notice a difference, but it doesn’t mean it’s correct :slight_smile:
The way you shape your mouth when pronouncing those sounds is slightly different. If you pronounce them the same you are doing it wrong.

Source: linguistics is my hobby and I studied phonetics of many languages, including Japanese.

I obviously can’t talk from a linguistics perspective since I’m not a linguist, but the way you shape your mouth is exactly the same. Historically, probably about a millennium ago, there was a difference in pronunciation, but that sound was phased out of the Japanese language a very long time ago.
I understand that you’re saying the change in sound is very subtle, but I stand by what I said - they are exactly the same. I just googled it and the first three results back up that fact. Linguistics being a hobby and the fact you have studied phonetics is unfortunately not a source. This is the same as saying “Source: me”.
Of course, を is used as a particle (you can never begin a sentence with it) so being that it is always in the middle of a sentence, of course the shape of your mouth may be ever so slightly different because you are continuing your speech from the previous word, but if you asked a Japanese person to pronounce both of these characters without anything attached to them, there would be zero difference in pronunciation.

More typing tips, to get a small character, you type “x” and then what you want.

あぁ、あぃ、あぅ、あぇ、あぉ (the あ is just for size reference)
あヵ、あヶ、あっ can do it with a few other kana too :smiley:

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In songs it’s sometimes pronounced as “wo”.

I think I owe you my life for that shortcut! The small kana have been the bane of my existence for too long, and being horrific with technology I had no idea there was such an easy trick to it.

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It’s been a life changer! xD I saw my iTalki tutor typing and when she made a small kana, I was immediately like “TEACH ME YOUR WAYS!” and she laughed xD

You can also get emojis when you type out Japanese words too:
はーと = :heart: :yellow_heart:
やじるし = ⇒ ↑
いぬ = :dog:
Just a few examples! (The arrow one actually has a ton of options xD)

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@conan I honestly think that this is a more efficient way of typing emoji than searching for the right one on the emoji keyboard. :grin:

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I don’t think I’ve ever got my emojis any other way. :joy:

On a slightly different topic, who uses the romaji keyboard and who uses the kana keyboard on their phones?
When I first started I used the romaji one but then I was strict with myself and started to use the kana one. It took me about a month to do it fluently but it’s SO much quicker and you make much fewer typos because the keys are bigger. I’ve been on it for about 4 years now.

This is exactly what I did. When I was in my second year of Uni, I downloaded an early version of Japanese (amazing app, btw) and forced myself to use it. I have been using the kana keyboard on my iPhone for over 10 years now and will never go back.

Edit: Swiping intensifies

My friends all thought there was something wrong with me for about a month because I usually reply to text messages straight away and when I started using the kana keyboard it would take me 10 minutes to write a really short message. I wanted to explain that to them but explaining why I was taking so long via text would take me another 10 minutes so I just made them all be patient for a month :rofl:

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I’m forever using emojis that way myself, too! It’s so much easier, and better that leafing through Windows’ clunky emoji, uh… window.

I need to make the switch over to kana keyboard, honestly. Naturally I lean towards the romaji one but I think it’d be a useful switch for me, especially as a typo fiend…

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I use the kana keyboard but never used it enough to get really proficient. Right now especially I use it incredibly seldom because I’m just not typing in Japanese on my phone, but at least I usually remember which way to swipe now for the iueo versions.

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