We (kana)

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show This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (September 2011) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 2,608 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:ゑ]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|ja|ゑ}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

we
hiragana katakana
transliteration	e, we
hiragana origin	恵
katakana origin	恵
Man'yōgana	廻 恵 面 咲
unicode	U+3091, U+30F1
braille

ゑ in hiragana, or ヱ in katakana, is a nearly obsolete Japanese kana. The combination of an W-column kana letter with "ゑ゙" in hiragana was also introduced to represent [ve] in the 19th century and 20th century.

It is presumed that 'ゑ' represented [ɰe] (listen), and that ゑ and え indicated different pronunciations until somewhere between the Kamakura period and the Taishō period, when they both came to be pronounced as 'イェ' [je] (listen), later shifting to the modern 'エ' [e].^{[citation needed]} Along with the kana for wi ('ゐ' in hiragana, 'ヰ' in katakana), this kana was deemed obsolete in Japanese in 1946 and replaced with え and エ. It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia or foreign words, the katakana form 'ウェ' (U-[small-e]) is preferred, as in "ウェスト" for "west".

The kana still sees some modern-day usage. Ebisu is usually written as "えびす", but sometimes "ゑびす" like Kyōto Ebisu Shrine (京都ゑびす神社, Kyōto Ebisu Jinja),^[1] and name of the beer Yebisu (ヱビス), which is actually pronounced "Ebisu". The Japanese title of the Rebuild of Evangelion series is Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition (ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版, Evangerion Shin Gekijōban). Katakana ヱ is sometimes written with a dakuten, ヹ, to represent a /ve/ sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to write this, and the combination ヴェ is far more common.

Hiragana ゑ is still used in several Okinawan orthographies for the syllable /we/. In the Ryūkyū University system, ゑ is also combined with a small ぃ (ゑぃ/ヱィ), to represent the sound /wi/. Katakana ヱ is used in Ainu for /we/.

Stroke order[]

Stroke order of both ゑ and ヱ

Animated	Diagram
Stroke order in writing ゑ
Stroke order in writing ヱ

The hiragana ゑ is made with one stroke. It resembles a hiragana る that continues with a double-humped ん shape underneath.

The katakana ヱ is made with three strokes:

1. A horizontal line that hooks down and to the left.
2. A vertical line, just grazing the end of the first stroke.
3. A long horizontal line across the bottom.

Other communicative representations[]

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
かぎのあるヱ Kagi no aru "We"	▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-235 Japanese Braille

• Full Braille representation

ゑ / ヱ in Japanese Braille
ゑ / ヱ we	ヹ ve	ゑい / ヱー wē/wei	ヹー vē/vei

• Computer encodings