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Yi (kana)

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yi
hiragana
japanese hiragana yi
katakana
japanese katakana yi
transliterationyi
hiragana origin
katakana origin

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

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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 and as a result of regular historical sound changes.

Characters

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

These suggestions were not accepted.

Unicode

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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

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

See also

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