Wu is a ''

hentaigana In the Japanese writing system, are variant forms of hiragana. History Today, with few exceptions, there is only one hiragana for each of the forty-five moras that are written without diacritics or digraphs. However, traditionally the ...

'', a variant

kana The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most pr ...

or Japanese syllable.Iannacone, Jake (2020)
"Reply to The Origin of Hiragana /wu/ 平仮名のわ行うの字源に対する新たな発見"
/ref>

History

It is presumed that 𛄟 would have represented . Along with 𛀆 and 𛀁 (''yi'' and ''ye'' respectively), the syllable ''wu'' 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 and ''wu'' are thought to have never occurred as syllables in Japanese, and 𛀁 was merged with え and エ.

Characters

In the Edo period and the Meiji period, some Japanese linguists tried to separate kana ''u'' and kana ''wu''. The shapes of characters differed with each linguist. 𛄟 and 𛄢 were just two of many shapes. They were phonetic symbols to fill in the blanks of the gojuon table. Japanese people didn't separate them in normal writing. *u **Traditional kana ***う (Hiragana) ***𛀋 (Hentaigana of う. Hiragana.) ***𛀍 (Hentaigana of う. Hiragana.) ***ウ (Katakana) **Constructed kana *** Katakana U3

(A part of 傴. Katakana.) *wu **Traditional kana ***う (Hiragana) ***𛀋 (Hentaigana of う. Hiragana.) ***ウ (Katakana) ***𛄢 (An old variant form of ウ. Katakana.) **Constructed kana ***う^〻(う with dots. Hiragana.) ***𛄟 (A cursive script style of 汙.Iannacone, Jake (2020)
"Reply to The Origin of Hiragana /wu/ 平仮名のわ行うの字源に対する新たな発見"
/ref> Hiragana.) *** 紆 kana

(A cursive script style of 紆. Hiragana.) *** Hiragana Wu 3

(A cursive script style of 迂. Hiragana,) *** Hiragana Wu 4

(A cursive script style of 卯. Hiragana.) ***ウ^〻小学日本文典入門. 巻之1
/ref>(ウ with dots. Katakana.) These suggestions weren't accepted.

Unicode

This kana has been encoded into Unicode 14.0 since September 14, 2021 as HIRAGANA LETTER ARCHAIC WU (U+1B11F), and KATAKANA LETTER ARCHAIC WU (U+1B122).

History

Characters

Unicode

Notes

References

See also