Yi (kana) : History, Characters, Unicode Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yi (kana)

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Character of the Japanese writing system

hiragana

katakana

transliteration

hiragana origin

以

katakana origin

以

kana gojūon

wa	ra	ya	ma	ha	na	ta	sa	ka	a
wi	ri	(yi)	mi	hi	ni	chi	shi	ki	i
(wu)	ru	yu	mu	fu	nu	tsu	su	ku	u
we	re	(ye)	me	he	ne	te	se	ke	e
wo	ro	yo	mo	ho	no	to	so	ko	o
			n

Kana modifiers and marks

sokuonfu (gemination)
yōon (palatalization)
chōonpu (vowel lengthener)
Iteration marks
dakuten/handakuten (voiced & semi-voiced marks)

Multi-moraic kana

iu
kashiko
koto
sama
shite
toki
tomo
nari
mairasesoro
yori

Yi (hiragana: 𛀆, katakana: 𛄠) is a Japanese mora or a kana used to write it, though it has never been in standard use.^[1]

History

It is presumed that yi would have represented [ji].^[2] Along with 𛀁 (ye) and 𛄟 (wu), the mora yi has no officially recognized kana, as these morae 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 morae 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 glyphs.

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^[3] (Hiragana)
  - イ^[4] (Katakana)

yi
- Traditional kana
  - い (Hiragana)
  - 𛀆^[5] (Hentaigana of い. Hiragana.𛀆)
  - イ (Katakana)
- Constructed kana
  - い^〻^[6](い with dots. Hiragana.)
  - 𛀆^〻 ^[7](𛀆 with dots. Hiragana.)
  - イ^〻^[8](イ with dots. Katakana.)
  - 𛄠^[9]^[10](A part of 以.^[11] Katakana.)

These suggestions were not accepted.

Unicode

The hiragana form of this kana is encoded into Unicode as HENTAIGANA LETTER I-1, with the position of U+1B006, while the katakana is encoded as KATAKANA LETTER ARCHAIC YI, in the position U+1B120.^[12]

References

^ 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"
^ Gross, Abraham. "Proposal to Encode Missing Japanese Kana" (PDF). Unicode.
^ 綴字篇
^ 綴字篇
^ 綴字篇
^ 小学日本文典入門. 巻之1
^ 小学日本文典入門. 巻之1
^ 小学日本文典入門. 巻之1
^ 綴字篇
^ 新式漢文捷径初歩
^ 新式漢文捷径初歩
^ "UCD: UnicodeData.txt". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2024-05-27.