 Hiragana |
 Katakana |
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| Transliteration: | wi | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Hiragana Man'yōgana: | 為 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Katakana Man'yōgana: | 井 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Unicode: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ゐ, in hiragana, or ヰ in katakana, is an obsolete Japanese kana, each of which represent one mora. It is presumed that ゐ represented 
/wi/ (help·info) and that ゐ and い indicated different pronunciations until somewhere between the Kamakura period and the Taishō period when they both came to be pronounced [i]. This kana was deemed obsolete in 1946, and replaced with い and イ. It is now rare in everyday usage. In fact, in onomatopoeia and foreign words, the katakana form ウィ (U-[small-i]) is preferred.
One modern-day usage of this kana is the Japanese spelling of Nikka Whiskey, which is written "ニッカウヰスキー" (nikka uwisukī). Also, the name of the comedy duo Yoiko is written "よゐこ" (yowiko), and a character in the video game series Touhou Project has the name "てゐ" (Tewi).
Stroke order
See also
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Look up ゐ or ヰ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
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