Wi (kana)

ゐ, in hiragana, or ヰ in katakana, is a nearly obsolete Japanese kana, each of which represent one mora. It is presumed that ゐ represented and that ゐ and い indicated different pronunciations until somewhere between the Kamakura period and the Taishō period when they both came to be pronounced . Along with the kana for we, (ゑ in hiragana, ヱ in katakana), this kana was deemed obsolete in Japanese in 1946, and replaced with い and イ. It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia and foreign words, the katakana form ウィ (U-) is preferred.

The kana still sees some modern-day usage, such as the spelling of Nikka Whiskey, which is written "ニッカウヰスキー" (nikka uwisukī), the name of the comedy duo Yoiko is written "よゐこ" (yowiko), and a character in the video game series Touhou Project has the name "てゐ" (Tewi). Katakana ヰ is sometimes written with a dakuten, ヸ, to represent a 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 ヴぃ.

Hiragana ゐ is still used in one of the Okinawan orthographies, New Okinawan, for the syllable and in digraphs for . In the Ryukyu University system, it is used for , while い is . Katakana ヰ is used in Ainu for .

History

Nara period (710 – 794 CE)

During the Nara period, ヰ was pronounced as and イ as . In the Man'yōgana, there were characters to represent ヰ...
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