Yi (kana)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (August 2021) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 3,783 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:や行い]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|ja|や行い}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

yi
hiragana katakana
transliteration	yi
hiragana origin	以
katakana origin	以

Yi (hiragana: 𛀆, katakana: 𛄠) is a hentaigana, a variant kana or Japanese syllable.^[1]

History[edit]

It is presumed that yi would have represented [ji].^[2] Along with 𛀁 (ye) and 𛄟 (wu), the syllable yi has no officially recognized kana, as these syllables do not occur in native Japanese words; however, during the Meiji period, linguists almost unanimously agreed on the kana for yi, ye, and wu. 𛀆 (yi) and 𛄟 (wu) are thought to have never occurred as syllables in Japanese, and 𛀁 (ye) was merged with え and エ as a result of regular historical sound changes.

Characters[edit]

In the Edo period and the Meiji period, some Japanese linguists tried to separate kana i and kana yi. The shapes of characters differed with each linguist. 𛀆 and 𛄠 were just two of many shapes.

They were phonetic symbols to fill in the blanks of the gojuon table, but Japanese people did not separate them in normal writing.

• i
  • Traditional kana
    • い^[3] (Hiragana)
    • イ^[4] (Katakana)

• yi
  • Traditional kana
    • い (Hiragana)
    • 𛀆^[5] (Hentaigana of い. Hiragana.𛀆)
    • イ (Katakana)
  • Constructed kana
    • い^〻[6](い with dots. Hiragana.)
    • 𛀆^{〻 [7]}(𛀆 with dots. Hiragana.)
    • イ^〻[8](イ with dots. Katakana.)
    • 𛄠^[9][10](A part of 以.^[11] Katakana.)

These suggestions were not accepted.

Unicode[edit]

The hiragana form of this kana is encoded into Unicode as HENTAIGANA LETTER I-1, with the position of U+1B006, while the katakana is encoded as KATAKANA LETTER ARCHAIC YI, in the position U+1B120.

References[edit]

See also[edit]

• Ye (kana)
• Wu (kana)

This writing system–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e