Why do you write "ha" in hiragana, for "wa"?

Question

LoriSuri · Answer

It depends on what are you talking about. Wa is used as Wa in common words;
わたし　＊私＊　(I)
You use the wa in words.

But, the particle Ha, is ha and not wa. It's an exception.
私はアメリカ人です。
I'm American.

は is, in fact, は when it's a particle. Not わ, though it's read as WA.
わ is わ in words. You can't say Hatashi, it's Watashi.

"Why????" It's a cultural reason. The government decided to make this rule for the Japanese language.

minyon1013 · Answer

In "Old Kanazukai", "ha" other than the beginning of the word was pronounced "wa". When it became "new Kanazukai", I decided to write "wa" other than the particle as "wa" as it sounds, but I found that it was a particle only when it was the particle "ha". For the sake of simplicity, it was left with the notation "ha (wa)".

afiri107mk · Answer

The characters which Japanese people used has been changing throughout the history. Originally, they had no characters to signify their language. So they adopted Chinese characters to make it sound as the pronunciation of their speech. This became Kanji. Kan(漢) is the name of a Chinese nation back then.

Since then they had developped Kanji to make it to their own styles, which created Hiragana or Katakana. But basically they kept doing the same things; "Altering characters to apply them to the same sounds."

亜→あ→ア

This is mainly for practical use when it comes to be used by many people in middle ages. Because using Kanji every time is so hassling. And this time around (maybe the middle of Edo era)was when it was decided that the sound "wa" should be noted as は(even though は itself was pronounced as "ha".) And the "wa" sound lying in the head of words was excluded from this rule, In which case わ was used.

This is the reason to your question, and in fact, it came from the process of transition of writing system; how to signify the sounds/syllable.

[pronunciation]
はHa/Wa
わWa

[usage in a sentence①]
わたしは(This was adopted as correct)
わたしわ(☓Not like this)

[usage in a sentence②]
かはりに(This was adopted as correct)
かわりに(☓Not like this)

But this was confusing because there's two letters to signify one sound "wa". And the rule was changed even after this period(at the reformation of education disipline in Meiji era). It was meant to steamline how to switch the two characters は&わ.
The criteria "basically" made each characters loyal to the corresponding syllable. わ for "wa"sound, and は for "ha"sound.

[usage in a sentence③]
かわりに(This time, This is adopted as correct )
かはりに(☓this was retracted.)

But beforementioned [the usage in a sentence①] rule was kept validated after this reformation. (As the two people answered already, it is applied to only when it is "wa" particle.)

That's why we are still using a bit confusing system of using two letters for one sound.

afiri107mk · Answer

@Yotaver 
That's great. And very glad to help.

Why do you write "ha" in hiragana, for "wa"? See a translation

@Yotaver That's great. And very glad to help.

Why do you write "ha" in hiragana, for "wa"?

See a translation

@Yotaver
That's great. And very glad to help.