Wi (kana)
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| wi | |||
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| transliteration | i, wi | ||
| hiragana origin | 爲 | ||
| katakana origin | 井 | ||
| Man'yōgana | 位 為 謂 井 猪 藍 | ||
| spelling kana | ゐどのヰ (W)ido no "(w)i" | ||
| unicode | U+3090, U+30F0 | ||
| braille |  | ||
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| koto · · · · · yori · hentaigana | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wi (hiragana: ゐ, katakana: ヰ) is a nearly-obsolete Japanese kana, each written variant of which represent one mora. The combination of an 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 [ɰi] (
listen), and that 'ゐ' and 'い' represented distinct pronunciations before merging to [i] some time 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 '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.
The kana still sees some modern-day usage. 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 Kuusou Mesorogiwi ("空想メソロギヰ"). 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[]
Nara period (710 – 794 AD)[]
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)[]
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