fbpx
Wikipedia

Wi (kana)

November 10, 2023

Wi (hiragana: ゐ, katakana: ヰ) is a nearly obsolete Japanese kana (Japanese phonetic characters, each of which represents one mora). The combination of a W-column kana letter with ゐ゙ in hiragana was introduced to represent [vi] in the 19th century and 20th century. It is presumed that 'ゐ' represented [wi] ⓘ, and that 'ゐ' and 'い' represented distinct pronunciations before merging to [i] sometime between the Kamakura and Taishō periods. Along with the kana for we ('ゑ' in hiragana, 'ヱ' in katakana), this kana was deemed obsolete in Japanese with the orthographic reforms of 1946, to be replaced by 'い/イ' in all contexts. It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia and foreign words, the katakana form 'ウィ' (U-[small-i]) is preferred.

wi
transliterationwi
hiragana origin爲
katakana origin井
Man'yōgana位 為 謂 井 猪 藍
spelling kanaゐどのヰ
Wido no "wi"
unicodeU+3090, U+30F0
braille

The kana still sees some modern-day usage, however. The spelling of whisky is usually uisukii ("ウイスキー"), but is sometimes written uwisukii ("ウヰスキー") stylistically, such as Nikka Whisky (ニッカウヰスキー, nikka uwisukii). The name of the comedy duo Yoiko is written yowiko ("よゐこ"), a character in the video game series Touhou Project has the name "てゐ" (Tewi) and the first opening theme to the Future Diary anime series is titled "空想メソロギヰ" (Kuusou Mesorogiwi). The katakana ヰ is sometimes written with a dakuten, 'ヸ', to represent a /vi/ sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to do this. It is far more common for /vi/ to be represented by the combination 'ヴィ'.

Hiragana 'ゐ' is still used in one of the Okinawan orthographies, New Okinawan, for the syllable /wi/ and in digraphs for /kwi, ɡwi/. In the Ryukyu University system, the katakana 'ヰ' is used for /i/, while 'い' is /ʔi/. The katakana 'ヰ' is also used in Ainu for /wi/.

History edit

Nara period (710 – 794 AD) edit

During the Nara period, ヰ was pronounced as [wi] and イ as [i]. In the Man'yōgana, there were characters to represent ヰ (e.g. 井, 位, 爲, 猪, 謂, 藍) and イ (e.g. 已, 五, 以, 伊, 怡, 射, 移, 異); no characters for one could be used to pronounce the other. The labial glides クヰ [kʷi] and グヰ [gʷi] also existed (though in those days small script kana were not used for glides), and were distinct from キ [ki] and ギ [gi].

Heian Period (794 – 1184 AD) edit

During the Heian period, ゐ and い were still recognized as separately pronounced characters. In the mid-to-late 11th century, the Iroha song was developed, and い, え, and お (i, e, and o) were differentiated from ゐ, ゑ, and を (wi, we, and wo). In the Gojūon ordering (developed around 1075 by the scholar Hirotomo, based on the Siddhaṃ script), there were no sounds for “yi”, “ye”, “wu”, or “wo”. Although the distinction had been lost between オ (o) and ヲ (wo) as well as 𛀀 (e) and エ (ye), there was still a distinction between ア/ワ (a/wa), イ/ヰ (i/wi), and 𛀀/ヱ (e/we).

In Ki no Tsurayuki's literary work, the Tosa Nikki (originally written in 935, transcribed in 1236), the phrase “海賊報いせむ” (kaizoku mukui semu) is written as “かいぞくむくゐせむ” (kaizoku mukuwi semu), with ゐ where い should be. In this way, examples of confusion between ゐ and い were emerging, little by little; however, during the Heian period these confusions were few and far between.

Since the Nara period, /h/ began to be pronounced as [w] in word-medial position; by the beginning of the 11th century, this phenomenon, called the "Ha-line shift", had become more widespread. In word-medial or word-final position, ひ [ɸi] would be pronounced [wi], therefore becoming the same as ゐ. Because of this, the use of ひ and ゐ also became confused.

At the end of the 12th century, the literary work “Shinkyō Shiki Chū” (which contained katakana, from the last years of the Insei period) attests examples of ゐ and い losing their distinction, such as “率て” (wite) being written “イテ” (ite).

Furthermore, in Heian period literature, special kanji readings such as “クヰヤウ” [kʷʲau] and “ヰヤウ” [wʲau] were used, but were not well established.

Kamakura Period (1185–1333 AD) edit

By the Kamakura period, the confusion between ゐ and い had become even more widespread, and by the 13th century, ゐ and い were unified. By changing from [wi] to [i], ゐ had merged into い. Also, kanji that were represented by クヰ and グヰ had become pronounced [ki] and [gi] respectively, merging them with キ and ギ.

Due to the Ha-line shift as well as the merging of a number of syllables, soon there were many kana pronounced the same way, and kana orthography was in chaos. Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241), in the “Unpleasant Characters” (嫌文字事) section of Gekanshū (a poetry volume), established rules for about 60 words containing を/お, え/へ/ゑ, and い/ひ/ゐ, based on a number of writings from the mid-11th to 12th century. However, the books that Teika had referenced already contained a number of confusions, with ひ becoming ゐ, such as 遂 (formerly “つひ” tsuhi) being represented as “つゐ” (tsuwi) and 宵 (formerly “よひ” yohi) being represented as “よゐ” (yowi); い becoming either ひ or ゐ, such as 老い (historically “おい” oi) being represented as “おゐ” (owi) or “おひ” (ohi); and various other spellings differing from their original pronunciation. Teika's syllabary particularly drew from poetry such as waka and renga, but a number of examples of confusion between い, ゐ, and word-medial/final ひ were also frequently pulled from other sources.

Muromachi Period (1333–1573 AD) edit

 
Karuta card, 19th century, bearing the ゐ character.
 
Grave of William Adams; his name is spelled using the ゐ kana (smaller text at right).

In the Nanboku-chō period, the scholar Gyōa published the Kanamojizukai (Kana Character Syllabary, completed in 1363), drastically augmenting the lexicon by over 1000 words. Though the Kanamojizukai was generally as widely accepted as Teika's syllabary, in practice there were a number of kana pronunciations that did not conform to it.

In Christian rōmaji documents from the 16th century (the later part of the Muromachi period), ゐ and い were written with either “i”, “j”, or “y”, but the pronunciation was understood to be [i] in any case.

Stroke order edit

 
Stroke order in writing ゐ
 
Stroke order in writing ヰ
 
Stroke order in writing あ

The Hiragana ゐ is made with one stroke. It resembles the second stroke of the Hiragana ぬ, with an additional short horizontal line at the start.

 
Stroke order in writing ヰ

The Katakana ヰ is made with four strokes:

  1. A horizontal line.
  2. A vertical line.
  3. A horizontal line.
  4. A vertical line.

Other communicative representations edit

  • Full Braille representation
ゐ / ヰ in Japanese Braille
ゐ / ヰ
wi		 ヸ
vi		 ゐい / ヰー
wī		 ヸー
vī
 　          
Character information
Preview ゐ ヰ 𛅐
Unicode name HIRAGANA LETTER WI KATAKANA LETTER WI HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL WI
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 12432 U+3090 12528 U+30F0 110928 U+1B150
UTF-8 227 130 144 E3 82 90 227 131 176 E3 83 B0 240 155 133 144 F0 9B 85 90
UTF-16 12432 3090 12528 30F0 55340 56656 D82C DD50
Numeric character reference ゐ ゐ ヰ ヰ 𛅐 𛅐
Shift JIS[1] 130 238 82 EE 131 144 83 90
EUC-JP[2] 164 240 A4 F0 165 240 A5 F0
GB 18030[3] 164 240 A4 F0 165 240 A5 F0 147 54 132 50 93 36 84 32
EUC-KR[4] / UHC[5] 170 240 AA F0 171 240 AB F0
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[6] 198 244 C6 F4 199 170 C7 AA
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[7] 199 119 C7 77 199 236 C7 EC
Character information
Preview 𛅤 ヸ ㋼
Unicode name KATAKANA LETTER SMALL WI KATAKANA LETTER VI CIRCLED KATAKANA WI
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 110948 U+1B164 12536 U+30F8 13052 U+32FC
UTF-8 240 155 133 164 F0 9B 85 A4 227 131 184 E3 83 B8 227 139 188 E3 8B BC
UTF-16 55340 56676 D82C DD64 12536 30F8 13052 32FC
Numeric character reference 𛅤 𛅤 ヸ ヸ ㋼ ㋼
Shift JIS (KanjiTalk 7)[8] 136 107 88 6B
Shift JIS (JIS X 0213)[9] 132 147 84 93
EUC-JP (JIS X 0213)[10] 167 243 A7 F3
GB 18030[3] 147 54 134 50 93 36 86 32 129 57 167 54 81 39 A7 36

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
  2. ^ Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
  3. ^ a b Standardization Administration of China (SAC) (2005-11-18). GB 18030-2005: Information Technology—Chinese coded character set.
  4. ^ Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
  5. ^ Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
  6. ^ Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
  7. ^ van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.
  8. ^ Apple Computer (2005-04-05) [1995-04-15]. "Map (external version) from Mac OS Japanese encoding to Unicode 2.1 and later". Unicode Consortium.
  9. ^ Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "Shift_JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 1) vs Unicode mapping table".
  10. ^ Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "EUC-JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 3) vs Unicode mapping table".

External links edit

 
Look up ゐ or ヰ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to ゐ.
 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to ヰ.

November 10, 2023
kana, this, article, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, improve, this, article, adding, citations, reliable, sources, unsourced, material, challenged, removed, find, sources, kana, news, newspapers, books, scholar, jstor, september, 2020. This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Wi kana news newspapers books scholar JSTOR September 2020 Learn how and when to remove this template message Wi hiragana ゐ katakana ヰ is a nearly obsolete Japanese kana Japanese phonetic characters each of which represents one mora The combination of a W column kana letter with ゐ in hiragana was introduced to represent vi in the 19th century and 20th century It is presumed that ゐ represented wi and that ゐ and い represented distinct pronunciations before merging to i sometime between the Kamakura and Taishō periods Along with the kana for we ゑ in hiragana ヱ in katakana this kana was deemed obsolete in Japanese with the orthographic reforms of 1946 to be replaced by い イ in all contexts It is now rare in everyday usage in onomatopoeia and foreign words the katakana form ウィ U small i is preferred wihiraganakatakanatransliterationwihiragana origin爲katakana origin井Man yōgana位 為 謂 井 猪 藍spelling kanaゐどのヰWido no wi unicodeU 3090 U 30F0brailleThe kana still sees some modern day usage however The spelling of whisky is usually uisukii ウイスキー but is sometimes written uwisukii ウヰスキー stylistically such as Nikka Whisky ニッカウヰスキー nikka uwisukii The name of the comedy duo Yoiko is written yowiko よゐこ a character in the video game series Touhou Project has the name てゐ Tewi and the first opening theme to the Future Diary anime series is titled 空想メソロギヰ Kuusou Mesorogiwi The katakana ヰ is sometimes written with a dakuten ヸ to represent a vi sound in foreign words however most IMEs lack a convenient way to do this It is far more common for vi to be represented by the combination ヴィ Hiragana ゐ is still used in one of the Okinawan orthographies New Okinawan for the syllable wi and in digraphs for kwi ɡwi In the Ryukyu University system the katakana ヰ is used for i while い is ʔi The katakana ヰ is also used in Ainu for wi Contents 1 History 1 1 Nara period 710 794 AD 1 2 Heian Period 794 1184 AD 1 3 Kamakura Period 1185 1333 AD 1 4 Muromachi Period 1333 1573 AD 2 Stroke order 3 Other communicative representations 4 See also 5 References 6 External linksHistory editNara period 710 794 AD edit During the Nara period ヰ was pronounced as wi and イ as i In the Man yōgana there were characters to represent ヰ e g 井 位 爲 猪 謂 藍 and イ e g 已 五 以 伊 怡 射 移 異 no characters for one could be used to pronounce the other The labial glides クヰ kʷi and グヰ gʷi also existed though in those days small script kana were not used for glides and were distinct from キ ki and ギ gi Heian Period 794 1184 AD edit During the Heian period ゐ and い were still recognized as separately pronounced characters In the mid to late 11th century the Iroha song was developed and い え and お i e and o were differentiated from ゐ ゑ and を wi we and wo In the Gojuon ordering developed around 1075 by the scholar Hirotomo based on the Siddhaṃ script there were no sounds for yi ye wu or wo Although the distinction had been lost between オ o and ヲ wo as well as 𛀀 e and エ ye there was still a distinction between ア ワ a wa イ ヰ i wi and 𛀀 ヱ e we In Ki no Tsurayuki s literary work the Tosa Nikki originally written in 935 transcribed in 1236 the phrase 海賊報いせむ kaizoku mukui semu is written as かいぞくむくゐせむ kaizoku mukuwi semu with ゐ where い should be In this way examples of confusion between ゐ and い were emerging little by little however during the Heian period these confusions were few and far between Since the Nara period h began to be pronounced as w in word medial position by the beginning of the 11th century this phenomenon called the Ha line shift had become more widespread In word medial or word final position ひ ɸi would be pronounced wi therefore becoming the same as ゐ Because of this the use of ひ and ゐ also became confused At the end of the 12th century the literary work Shinkyō Shiki Chu which contained katakana from the last years of the Insei period attests examples of ゐ and い losing their distinction such as 率て wite being written イテ ite Furthermore in Heian period literature special kanji readings such as クヰヤウ kʷʲau and ヰヤウ wʲau were used but were not well established Kamakura Period 1185 1333 AD edit By the Kamakura period the confusion between ゐ and い had become even more widespread and by the 13th century ゐ and い were unified By changing from wi to i ゐ had merged into い Also kanji that were represented by クヰ and グヰ had become pronounced ki and gi respectively merging them with キ and ギ Due to the Ha line shift as well as the merging of a number of syllables soon there were many kana pronounced the same way and kana orthography was in chaos Fujiwara no Teika 1162 1241 in the Unpleasant Characters 嫌文字事 section of Gekanshu a poetry volume established rules for about 60 words containing を お え へ ゑ and い ひ ゐ based on a number of writings from the mid 11th to 12th century However the books that Teika had referenced already contained a number of confusions with ひ becoming ゐ such as 遂 formerly つひ tsuhi being represented as つゐ tsuwi and 宵 formerly よひ yohi being represented as よゐ yowi い becoming either ひ or ゐ such as 老い historically おい oi being represented as おゐ owi or おひ ohi and various other spellings differing from their original pronunciation Teika s syllabary particularly drew from poetry such as waka and renga but a number of examples of confusion between い ゐ and word medial final ひ were also frequently pulled from other sources Muromachi Period 1333 1573 AD edit nbsp Karuta card 19th century bearing the ゐ character nbsp Grave of William Adams his name is spelled using the ゐ kana smaller text at right In the Nanboku chō period the scholar Gyōa published the Kanamojizukai Kana Character Syllabary completed in 1363 drastically augmenting the lexicon by over 1000 words Though the Kanamojizukai was generally as widely accepted as Teika s syllabary in practice there were a number of kana pronunciations that did not conform to it In Christian rōmaji documents from the 16th century the later part of the Muromachi period ゐ and い were written with either i j or y but the pronunciation was understood to be i in any case Stroke order edit nbsp Stroke order in writing ゐ nbsp Stroke order in writing ヰ nbsp Stroke order in writing あThe Hiragana ゐ is made with one stroke It resembles the second stroke of the Hiragana ぬ with an additional short horizontal line at the start nbsp Stroke order in writing ヰThe Katakana ヰ is made with four strokes A horizontal line A vertical line A horizontal line A vertical line Other communicative representations editJapanese radiotelephony alphabet Wabun codeゐどのヰ Wido no Wi nbsp nbsp nbsp Japanese Navy Signal Flag Japanese semaphore Japanese manual syllabary fingerspelling Braille dots 23 Japanese Braille Full Braille representationゐ ヰ in Japanese Brailleゐ ヰ wi ヸ vi ゐい ヰー wi ヸー vi nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp Computer encodingsCharacter information Preview ゐ ヰ 𛅐Unicode name HIRAGANA LETTER WI KATAKANA LETTER WI HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL WIEncodings decimal hex dec hex dec hexUnicode 12432 U 3090 12528 U 30F0 110928 U 1B150UTF 8 227 130 144 E3 82 90 227 131 176 E3 83 B0 240 155 133 144 F0 9B 85 90UTF 16 12432 3090 12528 30F0 55340 56656 D82C DD50Numeric character reference amp 12432 wbr amp x3090 wbr amp 12528 wbr amp x30F0 wbr amp 110928 wbr amp x1B150 wbr Shift JIS 1 130 238 82 EE 131 144 83 90EUC JP 2 164 240 A4 F0 165 240 A5 F0GB 18030 3 164 240 A4 F0 165 240 A5 F0 147 54 132 50 93 36 84 32EUC KR 4 UHC 5 170 240 AA F0 171 240 AB F0Big5 non ETEN kana 6 198 244 C6 F4 199 170 C7 AABig5 ETEN HKSCS 7 199 119 C7 77 199 236 C7 ECCharacter information Preview 𛅤 ヸ Unicode name KATAKANA LETTER SMALL WI KATAKANA LETTER VI CIRCLED KATAKANA WIEncodings decimal hex dec hex dec hexUnicode 110948 U 1B164 12536 U 30F8 13052 U 32FCUTF 8 240 155 133 164 F0 9B 85 A4 227 131 184 E3 83 B8 227 139 188 E3 8B BCUTF 16 55340 56676 D82C DD64 12536 30F8 13052 32FCNumeric character reference amp 110948 wbr amp x1B164 wbr amp 12536 wbr amp x30F8 wbr amp 13052 wbr amp x32FC wbr Shift JIS KanjiTalk 7 8 136 107 88 6BShift JIS JIS X 0213 9 132 147 84 93EUC JP JIS X 0213 10 167 243 A7 F3GB 18030 3 147 54 134 50 93 36 86 32 129 57 167 54 81 39 A7 36See also editU kana I kana References edit Unicode Consortium 2015 12 02 1994 03 08 Shift JIS to Unicode Unicode Consortium IBM EUC JP 2007 International Components for Unicode a b Standardization Administration of China SAC 2005 11 18 GB 18030 2005 Information Technology Chinese coded character set Unicode Consortium IBM IBM 970 International Components for Unicode Steele Shawn 2000 cp949 to Unicode table Microsoft Unicode Consortium Unicode Consortium 2015 12 02 1994 02 11 BIG5 to Unicode table complete van Kesteren Anne big5 Encoding Standard WHATWG Apple Computer 2005 04 05 1995 04 15 Map external version from Mac OS Japanese encoding to Unicode 2 1 and later Unicode Consortium Project X0213 2009 05 03 Shift JIS 2004 JIS X 0213 2004 Appendix 1 vs Unicode mapping table Project X0213 2009 05 03 EUC JIS 2004 JIS X 0213 2004 Appendix 3 vs Unicode mapping table External links edit nbsp Look up ゐ or ヰ in Wiktionary the free dictionary nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to ゐ nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to ヰ Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Wi kana amp oldid 1173208440, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.