Japanese writing The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese ...

, the

kana are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , wh ...

え (

hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...

) and エ (

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...

) (

romanised In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, ...

''e'') occupy the fourth place, between

う U (hiragana: う, katakana: ウ) is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora (linguistics), mora. In the modern Japanese system of alphabetical order, they occupy the third place in the modern Gojūon (五十音) system of coll ...

and

お In Japanese writing, the kana お (hiragana) and オ (katakana) occupy the fifth place, between え and か, in the modern Gojūon (五十音) system of collating kana. In the Iroha, they occupy the 27th, between の and く. In the table at ...

, in the modern

Gojūon In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (''gojū'') in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are dis ...

(五十音) system of

collating Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fil ...

. In the

Iroha The is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian period (794–1179). The first record of its existence ...

, they occupy the 34th, between こ and て. In the table at right (ordered by columns, from right to left), え lies in the first column (あ行, "column A") and the fourth row (え段, "row E"). Both represent .

Derivation

え and エ originate, via

man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of t ...

, from the

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

衣 and 江, respectively. The archaic kana ゑ (we), as well as many non-initial occurrences of the character

へへ, in hiragana, or ヘ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, which represents one Mora (linguistics), mora. The sound is the only sound that is written almost identically in hiragana and katakana and therefore confusable according to the ...

(he), have entered the modern

Japanese language is the principal language of the Japonic languages, Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese dia ...

as え. The directional

particle In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...

へ is today pronounced "e", though not written as え. Compare this to は (ha) and

をを, in hiragana, or ヲ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one Mora (linguistics), mora. Historically, both are phonemically , reflected in the Nihon-shiki romanization, Nihon-shiki wo, although the contemporary ...

(wo), which are pronounced "wa" and "o" when used as grammatical particles. For the kana romanized sometimes as "e", see

we (kana) in , or in , is an obsolete Japanese that is normally pronounced in current-day Japanese. The combination of a W-column kana letter with "" in was introduced to represent ein the 19th and 20th centuries. It is presumed that represent ...

Variant forms

Scaled-down versions of the kana (ぇ, ェ) are used to express morae foreign to the Japanese language, such as ヴェ (ve). In several

Okinawan writing system Okinawan language, Okinawan, spoken in Okinawa Island. Documents in Ryukyu Kingdom were written in kanji and hiragana, derived from Japan. Although generally agreed among Linguistics, linguists to be a distinct language, most Japanese, as well ...

s, a small ぇ is also combined with the kana く(''ku'') and ふ (''fu'' or ''hu'') to form the digraphs くぇ ''kwe'' and ふぇ ''hwe''.

Transliteration

In the Hepburn,

Kunrei-shiki , also known as the Monbusho system (named after the endonym for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) or MEXT system, is the Cabinet-ordered romanization system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Lat ...

and

Nihon-shiki , romanized as in the system itself, is a romanization system for transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. Among the major romanization systems for Japanese, it is the most regular one and has an almost one-to-one rel ...

systems of

romanization In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...

, both え and エ are

transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...

as " e". In the Polivanov system of

cyrillization Cyrillization or Cyrillisation is the process of rendering words of a language that normally uses a writing system other than Cyrillic script into (a version of) the Cyrillic alphabet. Although such a process has often been carried out in an ad ...

, the kana are transliterated as " э".

Stroke order

The hiragana え is made with two

stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

s: #At the top, a short diagonal stroke proceeding downward and to the right. #At the bottom, a stroke composed of a horizontal line, a diagonal proceeding downward and to the left, and a rightward stroke resembling a

tilde The tilde (, also ) is a grapheme or with a number of uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish , which in turn came from the Latin , meaning 'title' or 'superscription'. Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...

(~). The katakana エ is made with three strokes: # At the top, a horizontal stroke from left to right. # A downward vertical stroke starting in the center of the first stroke. # At the bottom, a horizontal stroke parallel to the first stroke, and touching the second. This stroke is usually slightly longer than the first. This is also the way to make the Latin letter "I" (although the correct

upper case Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''#Majuscule, majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally ''#Minuscule, minuscule'') in the written representation of certain langua ...

form does not look like the

lower case Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...

Latin letter "l")

Other communicative representations

* Full Braille representation * Computer encodings :* Archaic and

Hentaigana In the Japanese writing system, are variant forms of hiragana. Description In contrast to modern Japanese, originally hiragana had several forms for a single sound. For example, while the hiragana reading "ha" has only one form in modern ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:E (Kana) Specific kana