The hiragana syllable は(ha). Its equivalent in katakana is ハ(ha). It is the twenty-sixth syllable in the gojūon order; its position is は行あ段(ha-gyō a-dan, “row ha, section a”).
The spelling was preserved as は (usually read as ha) in the script reform, rather than changed to わ(wa) as would otherwise be expected from the phonetics.
Note that English has no direct counterpart. For illustrative purposes, it may be translated as "as for", "speaking of", or a similar phrase. For example, "As for this, it is a dog". This often does not produce very natural English, however.
When inserted between two verbs for emphasis, は is usually used with negatives and after a て(te) form. This has given rise to ではない(de wa nai), the now standard negative form of だ(da).
(This term, は, is an alternative spelling of the above terms. For a list of all kanji read as は, not just those used in Japanese terms, see Category:Japanese kanji read as は.)
(This term, は, is an alternative spelling of the above Sino-Japanese term. For a list of all kanji read as は, not just those used in Japanese terms, see Category:Japanese kanji read as は.)