By changing from to, ゐ had merged into い. Because of this, the use of ひ and ゐ also became confused.Īt the end of the 12th century, the literary work “Shinkyō Shiki Chū” (which contained katakana, from the last years of the Insei period) attests examples of ゐ and い losing their distinction, such as “率て” ( wite) being written “イテ” ( ite).įurthermore, in Heian period literature, special kanji readings such as “クヰヤウ” and “ヰヤウ” were used, but were not well established.īy the Kamakura period, the confusion between ゐ and い had become even more widespread, and by the 13th century, ゐ and い were unified. In word-medial or word-final position, ひ would be pronounced, therefore becoming the same as ゐ. Since the Nara period, /h/ began to be pronounced as in word-medial position by the beginning of the 11th century, this phenomenon, called the "Ha-line shift", had become more widespread. In this way, examples of confusion between ゐ and い were emerging, little by little however, during the Heian period these confusions were few and far between. In Ki no Tsurayuki's literary work, the Tosa Nikki (originally written in 935, transcribed in 1236), the phrase “海賊報いせむ” ( kaizoku mukui semu) is written as “かいぞくむく ゐせむ” ( kaizoku muku wi semu), with ゐ where い should be. Although the distinction had been lost between オ ( o) and ヲ ( wo)Īs well as □ ( e) and エ ( ye), there was still a distinction between ア/ワ ( a/wa), イ/ヰ ( i/wi), and □/ヱ ( e/we). 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”. 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). ĭuring the Heian period, ゐ and い were still recognized as separately pronounced characters. The labial glides ク ヰ and グ ヰ also existed (though in those days small script kana were not used for glides), and were distinct from キ and ギ. 已, 五, 以, 伊, 怡, 射, 移, 異) no characters for one could be used to pronounce the other. In the Man'yōgana, there were characters to represent ヰ (e.g. History Nara period (710 – 794 AD) ĭuring the Nara period, ヰ was pronounced as and イ as. The katakana 'ヰ' is also used in Ainu for /wi/. In the Ryukyu University system, the katakana 'ヰ' is used for /i/, while 'い' is /ʔi/. Hiragana 'ゐ' is still used in one of the Okinawan orthographies, New Okinawan, for the syllable /wi/ and in digraphs for /kwi, ɡwi/. It is far more common for /vi/ to be represented by the combination 'ヴィ'. 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. 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 "空想メソロギヰ" (Kuusou Mesorogiwi). 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 kana still sees some modern-day usage, however. It is now rare in everyday usage in onomatopoeia and foreign words, the katakana form 'ウィ' (U-) is preferred. 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 by 'い/イ' in all contexts. It is presumed that 'ゐ' represented ( listen), and that 'ゐ' and 'い' represented distinct pronunciations before merging to some time between the Kamakura and Taishō periods. The combination of a W-column kana letter with ゐ゙ in hiragana was introduced to represent in the 19th century and 20th century. Wi ( hiragana: ゐ, katakana: ヰ) is a nearly-obsolete Japanese kana (Japanese phonetic characters, each of which represents one mora).
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