Fu (kana)

ふ, in hiragana, or フ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. The hiragana is made in four strokes, while the katakana in one. It represents the phoneme /hu͍/, although for phonological reasons (general scheme for [h] group, whose only phonologic survivor to [f] remaining is ふ: b<-p<--f-->h), the actual pronunciation is [ɸɯ] (listen), which is why it is romanized fu in Hepburn romanization instead of hu (Korean 후 /hu/ creates the same phonetic effect as lips are projected when pronouncing "u"). Written with a dakuten (ぶ, ブ), they both represent a "bu" sound, and written with handakuten (ぷ, プ) they both represent a "pu" sound.

fu
hiragana katakana
transliteration	fu, hu
hiragana origin	不
katakana origin	不
spelling kana	富士山のフ Fujisan no "fu"

The katakana フ is frequently combined with other vowels to represent sounds in foreign words. For example, the word "file" is written in Japanese as ファイル (fairu), with ファ representing a non-native sound, fa.

In certain Okinawan writing systems, ふ/フ can be written as ふぁ,ふぃ, ふぇ to make both fa, fi, and fe sounds as well as representing the sounds hwa, hwi, and hwe. In the Ryukyu University system, fa/hwa is written using the wa kana instead, ふゎ/フヮ. In the Ainu language the katakana with a handakuten プ can be written as a small ㇷ゚ to represent a final p sound. In the Sakhalin dialect, フ without a handakuten can be written as small ㇷ to represent a final h sound after an u sound (ウㇷ uh).