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 ...
It is presumed that ''yi'' would have represented . 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
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 (Hiragana)
***イ (Katakana)
*yi
**Traditional kana
***い (Hiragana)
***𛀆 (Hentaigana of い. Hiragana.𛀆)
***イ (Katakana)
**Constructed kana
***い〻(い with dots. Hiragana.)
***𛀆〻 (𛀆 with dots. Hiragana.)
***イ〻(イ with dots. Katakana.)
***𛄠(A part of 以.新式漢文捷径初歩 /ref> Katakana.)
These suggestions were not accepted.
Unicode
The hiragana form of this kana is encoded into Unicode as HIRAGANA 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
See also
*
Ye (kana)
Ye is a '' hentaigana'', a variant kana or Japanese syllable, no longer in standard use.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 th ...
*
Wu (kana)
Wu is a ''hentaigana'', a variant kana 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 represente ...