ka / か
The first character of the K row — a clean, hard 'ka' that anchors a hundred everyday words.
Pronunciation
The character か represents the syllable 'ka', a hard 'k' followed by 'a' as in 'father'. It is the first character of the か-row and is widely used in everyday Japanese vocabulary. The 'k' sound is unaspirated — softer than the English 'k'.
か anchors the か-row (か, き, く, け, こ) — every consonant + vowel pattern in Japanese starts here. It also appears at the END of questions, where it works like a spoken question mark: 元気ですか (Are you well?). Doubled in compounds as っか, it sharpens into a held 'k'.
How to write か
Trace か 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.
A long curved stroke that drops from the upper left to the lower right. Start at the top, sweep down and to the right, ending with a small upward hook — almost like a comma reversed.
A short horizontal stroke that crosses the first stroke about a third of the way down. Quick and clean.
A single small dot or short slanted mark to the right of the first stroke, near the top. Tiny but essential — it's what distinguishes か from や.
Origin
Hiragana か evolved from the cursive form of the kanji 加 (ka) — meaning "add" or "join." The long sweeping stroke preserves the kanji's left radical (力); the small detached mark on the upper right is what's left of its right side.
Common words starting with か
Printable practice sheet
Print this worksheet to practice writing か by hand — the top row shows the stroke order to trace, then fill the blank squares.
Lock it into memory
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