Katakana Letter Go

Katakana Letter Go at U+30B4 represents the Japanese mora “go,” pronounced with a hard g followed by the vowel o. It belongs to the Katakana block and is formed from the katakana ka-row letter with dakuten voicing marks, turning ko into go. In Japanese writing, it is used mainly in katakana words: loanwords, foreign names, brand names, sound effects, emphasis, and technical terms. Common examples include ゴルフ for “golf,” ゴリラ for “gorilla,” and ゴミ for “trash,” as well as names such as ゴードン for “Gordon.” It also appears in manga, games, advertising, and interface text when Japanese uses katakana for impact or stylized sound. A famous onomatopoeic use is ゴゴゴ, often seen in manga to suggest a tense rumbling presence or ominous atmosphere. The hiragana counterpart is ご, used in ordinary native-script spelling, while romanization writes this mora as go. It should not be confused with the visually similar pair コ plus a separate dakuten mark; this character is the precomposed katakana syllable used in standard Japanese text.