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Category symbols
Category phonology
Chōon
The '''chōon (長音|)''' or '''''bōsen'' (棒線|)''' mark is a symbol used to indicate a long vowel, especially in katakana writing. Its form is a horizontal or vertical line in the centre of the text with the width of one kanji or kana character. It is written horizontally in horizontal text and vertically in vertical text. In romanized Japanese, the function of the chōon mark is usually replaced by the macron mark above the vowel, as seen in this text. In JSL romanization, a doubled vowel, as in ''chooon'', is used. The ''chōon'' is a distinct mark from the vertical dash and in most Japanese typefaces it can easily be distinguished.
| ''chōon'' |
vertical dash |
| ー |
― |
The symbol is sometimes used with hiragana, for example in the signs of ramen restaurants, which are frequently written らーめん in hiragana. However, usually, hiragana does not use the ''chōon'' but another vowel kana to express this sound. The following table shows the usual hiragana equivalents used to form a long vowel, using the ha-gyō as an example.
| usual hiragana |
usual katakana |
| はあ |
ハー |
| ひい |
ヒー |
| ふう |
フー |
| べい |
ベー |
| ほう |
ホー |
In the Japanese Industrial Standards encoding system, the chōon has position 213C, and in Unicode it is at position 30FC.
Category:phonology