How to refer to kana verbally

Question

In the English alphabet, each letter has a pronunciation (or many) as well as a name (that is used when referring to the letter as an entity, when spelling, etc.). As far as I know, in Japanese, the kana have a pronunciation only and each kana's name is its pronunciation.

So my question is, "How do you verbally refer to a specific kana in Japanese?"

Specifically, I'm particularly interested in how to refer to ん (given that it represents a nasal sound and has no pronunciation by itself) and を (given that it sounds the same as お).

For example, how would one speak the following sentence:

「ん」と「を」の[読み方]{よみかた}は何{なん}ですか？

How do you read "ん" and "を"?

By the way, if the above sentence is not grammatical or unnatural, please correct me.

Answer 1

We usually call individual hiragana by its pronunciation. If it can be confusing, we can clarify that we're talking about hiraganas by saying, for example, "ひらがなの「あ」".

When we have to confirm that there is no mistake, we use words that include a certain hiragana. For example, we say "りんごの「り」". There is a standardized way to do this in radio communication. This is the same technique as we use to orally tell kanjis.

As you mentioned, 「を」 is special since it has same pronunciation as 「お」. There are various ways to refer to 「を」. I have heard "わ[行]{ぎょう}の「を」" and "くっつきの「を」". See Japanese Wikipedia article of を for more examples.

However, 「ん」 is not such a special hiragana, in that we can distinguish 「ん」 and others with pronunciation. Saying "ひらがなの「ん」" is enough.

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「ん」と「を」の[読み方]{よみかた}は[何]{なん}ですか？

How do you read "ん" and "を"?

I'd say:

ひらがなの、「ん」とわ行の「を」ってどう[読]{よ}めばいいんですか？

I used the techniques described above to refer to 「ん」 and 「を」.

"読み方は何ですか" is not wrong but it sounds like asking "What is the way to pronounce ...?". In this case asking "How ...?" is better, so I use the word どう that means "how."

Also, どう読めばいい（ん）ですか is more natural than どう読みますか. いい means "good" or "correct", so it sounds like "How to pronounce correctly ...?", which matches the context.