We (kana)

we
Hiragana
japanese hiragana we		 Katakana
japanese katakana we
Transliteratione, we
Hiragana origin恵
Katakana origin恵
Man'yōgana廻 恵 面 咲
Spelling kanaかぎのあるヱ
Kagi no aru "e"
UnicodeU+3091, U+30F1
Braille⠖
kana gojūon
warayamahanatasakaa
wiri(yi)mihinichishikii
(wu)ruyumufunutsusukuu
re(ye)mehenetesekee
woroyomohonotosokoo
n
Kana modifiers and marks
Multi-moraic kana

ゑ in hiragana, or ヱ in katakana, is an obsolete Japanese kana that is normally pronounced [e] in current-day Japanese. The combination of a W-column kana letter with "ゑ゙" in hiragana was introduced to represent [ve] in the 19th and 20th centuries.

It is presumed that 'ゑ' represented [we] ⓘ, and that ゑ and え indicated different pronunciations until somewhere between the Kamakura and Taishō periods, when they both came to be pronounced as 'イェ' [je] ⓘ, later shifting to the modern 'エ' [e]. Along with the kana for wi ('ゐ' in hiragana, 'ヰ' in katakana), this kana was deemed obsolete in Japanese in 1946 and replaced with え and エ. It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia or foreign words, the katakana form 'ウェ' (U-[small-e]) is used, as in "ウェスト" for "west".

The kana still sees some modern-day usage as a stylistic variant of 'え/エ'. Ebisu is usually written as "えびす", but sometimes "ゑびす" like Kyoto Ebisu Shrine (京都ゑびす神社, Kyōto Webisu Jinja),[1] and name of the beer Yebisu (ヱビス), which is actually pronounced "Ebisu". The Japanese title of the Rebuild of Evangelion series is Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition (ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版, Wevangeriwon Shin Gekijōban). VTuber Sakamata Chloe (沙花叉クロヱ) of Hololive Production uses Katakana ヱ (we) in place of the pronounced エ (e). Katakana ヱ is sometimes written with a dakuten, ヹ, to represent a /ve/ sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to write this, and the digraph ヴェ is far more common. The Meiji-era Classical Japanese version of the Bible renders Jehovah as ヱホバ (Yehoba), and ヱ (ye) is also used to transcribe any Hebrew name spelled with Je in English (pronounced "ye" in Hebrew, though), such as Jephthah (ヱフタ, Yefuta); the modern Japanese version, on the other hand, only uses エ (e), hence エホバ (Ehoba) and エフタ (Efuta).

Hiragana ゑ is still used in several Okinawan orthographies for the mora /we/. In the Ryūkyū University system, ゑ is also combined with a small ぃ (ゑぃ/ヱィ), to represent the sound /wi/. Katakana ヱ is used in Ainu for /we/.

In wāpuro rōmaji—that is, the string of letters used for input to produce ゑ or ヱ—the sequence is wye.

Stroke order

Sign in Tokyo reading ゑびす (Webisu...) in hiragana
Curtain sign in Tokyo reading ヤヱガキ (Yawegaki) in katakana
Stroke order of both ゑ and ヱ
Animated Diagram
Animated GIF showing the stroke order. The character is drawn similarly to the Arabic numeral '3', before a small loop is formed at the base of the character, and a small, squashed and italicised 'm' is drawn below as a base.
Stroke order in writing ゑ
Diagram showing the stroke order of the character: on the left, the finished character; on the right, a grayed-out version with small red arrows showing the stroke order, with a green dot showing the beginning point of the stroke.
Stroke order in writing ゑ
Animated GIF showing the stroke order. The character begins with a stroke resembling a squashed version of the Arabic numeral '7', before a separate vertical line is drawn separately beneath it, and a horizontal line forming the base of the character drawn below it, attached.
Stroke order in writing ヱ
Diagram showing the stroke order of the character: on the left, the finished character; on the right, a grayed-out version with small red arrows showing the stroke order, with green dots showing the beginning points of each stroke.
Stroke order in writing ヱ

The hiragana ゑ is made with one stroke. It resembles a hiragana る that continues with a double-humped ん shape underneath.

The katakana ヱ is made with three strokes:

  1. A horizontal line that hooks down and to the left.
  2. A vertical line, just grazing the end of the first stroke.
  3. A long horizontal line across the bottom.

Other communicative representations

  • Full Braille representation
ゑ / ヱ in Japanese Braille
ゑ / ヱ
we		 ヹ
ve		 ゑい / ヱー
wē/wei		 ヹー
vē/vei
⠖ (braille pattern dots-235) ⠐ (braille pattern dots-5)⠖ (braille pattern dots-235) ⠖ (braille pattern dots-235)⠒ (braille pattern dots-25) ⠐ (braille pattern dots-5)⠖ (braille pattern dots-235)⠒ (braille pattern dots-25)
Character information
Preview ゑ ヱ 𛅑 𛅥
Unicode name HIRAGANA LETTER WE KATAKANA LETTER WE HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL WE KATAKANA LETTER SMALL WE
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 12433 U+3091 12529 U+30F1 110929 U+1B151 110949 U+1B165
UTF-8 227 130 145 E3 82 91 227 131 177 E3 83 B1 240 155 133 145 F0 9B 85 91 240 155 133 165 F0 9B 85 A5
UTF-16 12433 3091 12529 30F1 55340 56657 D82C DD51 55340 56677 D82C DD65
Numeric character reference ゑ ゑ ヱ ヱ 𛅑 𛅑 𛅥 𛅥
Shift JIS[2] 130 239 82 EF 131 145 83 91
EUC-JP[3] 164 241 A4 F1 165 241 A5 F1
GB 18030[4] 164 241 A4 F1 165 241 A5 F1 147 54 134 51 93 36 86 33
EUC-KR[5] / UHC[6] 170 241 AA F1 171 241 AB F1
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[7] 198 245 C6 F5 199 171 C7 AB
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[8] 199 120 C7 78 199 237 C7 ED
Character information
Preview ヹ ㋽
Unicode name KATAKANA LETTER VE CIRCLED KATAKANA WE
Encodings decimal hex dec hex
Unicode 12537 U+30F9 13053 U+32FD
UTF-8 227 131 185 E3 83 B9 227 139 189 E3 8B BD
Numeric character reference ヹ ヹ ㋽ ㋽
Shift JIS (KanjiTalk 7)[9] 136 108 88 6C
Shift JIS (JIS X 0213)[10] 132 148 84 94
EUC-JP (JIS X 0213)[11] 167 244 A7 F4
GB 18030[4] 129 57 167 55 81 39 A7 37

References

  1. ^ 京都ゑびす神社
  2. ^ Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
  3. ^ Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
  4. ^ a b Standardization Administration of China (SAC) (2005-11-18). GB 18030-2005: Information Technology—Chinese coded character set.
  5. ^ Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
  6. ^ Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
  7. ^ Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
  8. ^ van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.
  9. ^ Apple Computer (2005-04-05) [1995-04-15]. "Map (external version) from Mac OS Japanese encoding to Unicode 2.1 and later". Unicode Consortium.
  10. ^ Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "Shift_JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 1) vs Unicode mapping table".
  11. ^ Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "EUC-JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 3) vs Unicode mapping table".

See also

Look up ゑ or ヱ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to ゑ.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to ヱ.
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