We (kana)

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

It is presumed that 'ゑ' represented, and that ゑ and え indicated different pronunciations until somewhere between the Kamakura and Taishō periods, when they both came to be pronounced as 'イェ' , later shifting to the modern 'エ'. 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 used, as in "ウェスト" for "west".

The kana still sees some modern-day usage as a stylistic variant of 'え/エ'. Ebisu is usually written as "えびす", but sometimes "ゑびす" like Kyoto Ebisu Shrine (京都ゑびす神社), 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). VTuber Sakamata Chloe (沙花叉クロヱ) of Hololive Production uses Katakana ヱ (we) in place of the pronounced エ (e). Katakana ヱ is sometimes written with a dakuten, ヹ, to represent a sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to write this, and the combination ヴェ is far more common. The Meiji-era Classical Japanese version of the Bible renders Jehovah as ヱホバ (Yehoba), and ヱ (ye) is also used to transcribe any Hebrew name spelled with Je in English (pronounced "ye" in Hebrew, though), such as Jephthah (ヱフタ); the modern Japanese version, on the other hand, only uses エ (e), hence エホバ (Ehoba) and エフタ (Efuta).

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

Stroke order


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

 * Full Braille representation


 * Computer encodings