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, 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 is preferred. The kana still sees some modern-day usage. The spelling of whisky is usually "ウイスキー", but sometimes written "ウヰスキー" stylistically, such as Nikka Whisky Distilling. The name of the comedy duoYoiko is written "よゐこ", a character in the video game seriesTouhou Project has the name "てゐ" and the first opening theme to the Future Diary anime series is titled "空想メソロギヰ". 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 ヴィ. 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, katakana ヰ is used for, while い is. Katakana ヰ is also used in Ainu for.
During the Nara period, ヰ was pronounced as and イ as . In the Man'yōgana, there were characters to represent ヰ and イ ; no characters for one could be used to pronounce the other. The labial glides ク and グ also existed, and were distinct from キ and ギ .
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 were differentiated from ゐ, ゑ, and を. In the Gojūon ordering, there were no sounds for “yi”, “ye”, “wu”, or “wo”. Although the distinction had been lost between オ and ヲ, there was still a distinction between ア/ワ, イ/ヰ, and エ/ヱ. In Ki no Tsurayuki's literary work, the Tosa Nikki, the phrase “海賊報いせむ” is written as “かいぞくむくゐせむ”, with ゐ where い should be. 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. 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 word-medial or word-final position, ひ would be pronounced , therefore becoming the same as ゐ. Because of this, the use of ひ and ゐ also became confused. At the end of the 12th century, the literary work “Shinkyō Shiki Chū” attests examples of ゐ and い losing their distinction, such as “率て” being written “イテ”. Furthermore, in Heian period literature, special kanji readings such as “クヰヤウ” and “ヰヤウ” were used, but were not well established.
By the Kamakura period, the confusion between ゐ and い had become even more widespread, and by the 13th century, ゐ and い were unified. By changing from to , ゐ had merged into い. Also, kanji that were represented by クヰ and グヰ had become pronounced and respectively, merging them with キ and ギ. Due to the Ha-line shift as well as the merging of a number of syllables, soon there were many kana pronounced the same way, and kana orthography was in chaos. Fujiwara no Teika, in the “Unpleasant Characters” section of Gekanshū, established rules for about 60 words containing を/お, え/へ/ゑ, and い/ひ/ゐ, based on a number of writings from the mid-11th to 12th century. However, the books that Teika had referenced already contained a number of confusions, with ひ becoming ゐ, such as 遂 being represented as “つゐ” and 宵 being represented as “よゐ” ; い becoming either ひ or ゐ, such as 老い being represented as “おゐ” or “おひ” ; and various other spellings differing from their original pronunciation. Teika's syllabary particularly drew from poetry such as waka and renga, but a number of examples of confusion between い, ゐ, and word-medial/final ひ were also frequently pulled from other sources.
In the Nanboku-chō period, the scholar Gyōa published the Kanamojizukai, drastically augmenting the lexicon by over 1000 words. Though the Kanamojizukai was generally as widely accepted as Teika's syllabary, in practice there were a number of kana pronunciations that did not conform to it. In Christian rōmaji documents from the 16th century, ゐ and い were written with either “i”, “j”, or “y”, but the pronunciation was understood to be in any case.
Stroke order
The Hiragana ゐ is made with one stroke. It resembles the second stroke of the Hiragana ぬ, with an additional short horizontal line at the start. The Katakana ヰ is made with four strokes:
