Tag: WI

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 [wi] ( listen) 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 [i]. 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-[small-i]) 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 /vi/ sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to do this. It is far…