Watashi WA?

[Abstrakt_Logic]

I was just wondering why the fourth character in this phrase is the character that is pronounced as "ha" when I see it written? Clarification will help me to sleep. Thank you!

[QuackingShoe]

Because that particle is written with the character that's pronounce 'ha'.

I know, I'm so banal, right?

But no, seriously, unless you want a history lesson, there's not much more to it. There are three particles (へ、を、は) that are written differently than they're read, due to historical reasons. They're read え、お、わ, respectively.

by and large, these are the only exceptions in modern Japanese. But いう happens to be read as ゆう, so la la la.

[Abstrakt_Logic]

Thank you so much. I thought I was crazy for a while. I think I'm going to like this site.

[Sp3ctre18]

why is the word for here pronounced the same as hear? ok, not totally related but still...

note that this is ONLY for when "wa" is the topic-marker particle, such as Watashi wa, kore wa, etc. You may see "wa" toward the end of the sentence but this is another use, so it is written わ.

It's only written はwhen it's a topic marker.

[Tirroth]

I ran into this today. Thankfully I remembered seeing this post. I found it odd that ha was used for wa. I'm glad I could come here to make sure my kana recognition wasn't takeing a dive, lol.