yi
hiragana katakana
transliteration	yi
hiragana origin	以
katakana origin	以

Yi (hiragana: 𛀆, katakana: 𛄠) is a hentaigana, a variant kana or Japanese syllable.^[1]

History

It is presumed that yi would have represented [ji].^[2] 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^[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.

References

See also

• Ye (kana)
• Wu (kana)