Why is "konnichi wa" in hiragana with は and not わ？
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question
etymology particle-は phonology
Why is "konnichi wa" written with は and not わ?
This is a matter of grammar and orthography. は is the transcription for the
sound "wa" when used as a grammatical particle (namely, the topic marker). わ
is used in virtually all other cases (I say virtually because older
orthographic conventions don't as neatly follow this rule).

In saying, こんにちは, you have two parts こんにち which means "this day" and は which
marks こんにち as the topic.

There's another particle which is pronounced as "wa". It's the sentence ending
particle わ, but this is transcribed as expected.

Incidentally, I'd saying writing the sound "wa" as は is not really a matter of
translation but transcription or transliteration (though trans _literation_
sounds a bit odd for referring to kana).

Incidentally, you could write こんにちは using katakana. In that case, it would be
written as コンニチハ.
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answer
There are some lingering question marks in the initial post and in the other
answers regarding why は is read as `/wa/` in こんにちは.

Other posters have already noted that this は is the topic particle -- which is
always read as `/wa/`.

The remaining question is, **why is this particle は read as`/wa/`?**

### The short(ish) answer

The answer lies in history. According to historical linguists, all of the
modern "H" kana (and "F" kana), はひふへほ, started out as "P" kana, read as `/pa
pi pu pe po/`. Over time, this initial `/p/` sound
[lenited](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenition) (i.e. softened) to become
more of an `/f/` sound in most places, and a `/w/` sound in some other places.
Still more recently, the `/f/` sound lenited further to `/h/` at the beginning
of a word, and in the middle of a word, it either became a `/w/` (for は) or
vanished to leave just the vowel (for ひふへほ).

_(Mid-word`/p/` sounds may be due to
[gemination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination) (when a consonant sound
is doubled), or to a preceding ん. Word-initial `/p/` sounds contrastive with
`/f/` sounds appear to be a development in perhaps the 1300s-1400s, used for
imitative words and borrowings.)_

### The longer story

For the details, let's look backwards. We'll start with the Japanese of the
early [Edo period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo_period), when the
language was in its [Early Modern
stage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Modern_Japanese). There was a very
important Japanese-Portuguese dictionary compiled in 1603, the [_Vocabulario
da Lingoa de Iapam_ , a.k.a. 日葡辞書 ( _Nippo Jisho_
)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippo_Jisho), which gives us a window into
the Japanese phonology (sounds) of the time. We find things like 日本 with a
reading of _Nifon_ , or 春 with a reading of _faru_ , showing that many of the
はひふへほ sounds of today were read instead with an `/f/` sound. But as a
particle, は was already `/wa/`.

Further back, even earlier during the stage called [Late Middle
Japanese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Middle_Japanese) (roughly the
1100s through the 1500s), linguistic research suggests that many of the "H"
kana within a word (not at the beginning) underwent a shift, probably going
from the `/f/` we see at the beginnings of words in the early 1600s to an
even-softer `/w/` sound. From there, many of these `/w/` sounds just
disappeared -- becoming just the vowel sounds -- except for the は, which
became `/wa/`. This is possibly because of the biomechanics of Japanese
pronunciation (the shapes the mouth makes), perhaps making sound combinations
like `/wi/`, `/wu/`, `/we/`, and `/wo/` difficult, combined with a lack of any
strong need to distinguish these `/w/` sounds from the plain vowels.

_(Indeed,`/wu/` doesn't seem to have ever existed as a meaningful sound
contrast to just plain `/u/`, and `/wo/` is only very rarely encountered for を
when people are deliberately overpronouncing. Meanwhile, `/we/` apparently
became just `/e/` and `/wi/` became `/i/` some time in the 1200s.)_

We see remnants of this sound shift in modern speech. For instance, the
everyday verb 言う【いう】 "to say" has that `/w/` sound that seems to appear out of
nowhere in the negative conjugation _i **w** anai_. Historically, いう was
formerly spelled in kana as いふ, which you can still see in many Japanese-
Japanese dictionaries. This is the old kana spelling from before the spelling
reforms of the early and mid-1900s, more formally known as [historical kana
orthography
(spelling)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_kana_orthography), or
[歴史的【れきしてき】仮名【かな】遣【づか】い](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AD%B4%E5%8F%B2%E7%9A%84%E4%BB%AE%E5%90%8D%E9%81%A3)
in Japanese. Starting from いふ, we find that the conjugated stems would be:

  * いふ - plain form
  * いは - incomplete stem, most often seen in the negative
  * いひ - continuative stem, often seen followed by ます
  * いへ - conditional and imperative

But in modern Japanese, the conjugated stems are:

  * いう - plain form - the "F" disappeared
  * いわ - incomplete stem - the は became わ
  * いい - continuative stem - the "H" disappeared
  * いえ - conditional and imperative - the "H" disappeared
  * いおう - volitional 

_(Side note: the modern volitional ending`/oː/` (long **ō** ) came from the
incomplete stem plus う, and the `/au/` sound (like English "ow!") evolved into
`/ɔː/` (like English "awwww") and then to `/oː/`. For volitionals where the
ending `/oː/` would start with a `/w/`, like for いふ, the `/w/` disappeared
just as it mostly has for modern を.)_

### The result: our modern Japanese particles with funny readings

Particles are treated phonologically as suffixes to some extent, so this
pattern of historical mid-word "H" kana being read with a `/w/` sound for は
also effectively applies to the particle は. Similarly, the "H" kana read as
just the vowel sound also applies to the particle へ, and that same
vanishing-"W" process that results in the `/e/` reading for へ also applies to
the particle を. The spelling reforms of the 1900s adjusted official kana
spellings to match the expected pronunciations in almost all cases -- but the
particles were apparently deemed special, and the older spellings were
maintained, even though they don't quite match the expected pronunciations:
leaving us with modern は (`/wa/`), へ (`/e/`), and を (`/o/`).
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answer