go / ご
The last of the G row — こ with two tiny ticks (゛) becomes 'go'. Anchors meals, afternoons, and the polite prefix ご〜.
Pronunciation
The character ご represents the syllable 'go', a hard 'g' followed by 'o'. It is こ with the dakuten that voices 'k' to 'g'.
ご is こ (ko) plus the dakuten ゛. It anchors many essentials: ご飯 (gohan, "meal/rice"), 午後 (gogo, "afternoon"), 午前 (gozen, "morning/AM"), 五 (go, "five"), 苺 (ichigo, "strawberry"), 卵 (tamago, "egg"). It also appears as the polite prefix ご〜 attached to Sino-Japanese nouns (ご家族 gokazoku "your family", ご注意 gochuui "please be careful"), parallel to the お〜 prefix for native Japanese nouns. Word-initial ご is /go/; mid-word can soften to /ŋo/.
How to write ご
Trace ご on the canvas at the top of the page. Animated arrows show each stroke's direction; trace along them and the stroke fills in. Each numbered step below explains what that stroke does.
Write こ exactly: stroke 1 a short curving horizontal at the top — written left to right with a faint downward dip; stroke 2 a short curving horizontal at the bottom — also left to right, slightly longer than the first.
Add the dakuten (゛): two small tick marks at the upper right of the character, sitting just above and to the right of stroke 1. Strokes 3 and 4 are the two ticks, written quickly.
Origin
Hiragana ご shares its base shape with こ, which evolved from the kanji 己 (ko, "self"). The kanji's three horizontal strokes compressed into the two horizontals of こ; the dakuten ゛ was added later as a diacritic to mark the voiced /g/.
Common words starting with ご
Printable practice sheet
Print this worksheet to practice writing ご by hand — the top row shows the stroke order to trace, then fill the blank squares.
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