Loading AI tools
Character of the Japanese writing system From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In Japanese writing, the kana え (hiragana) and エ (katakana) (romanised e) occupy the fourth place, between う and お, in the modern Gojūon (五十音) system of collating kana. In the Iroha, they occupy the 34th, between こ and て. In the table at right (ordered by columns, from right to left), え lies in the first column (あ行, "column A") and the fourth row (え段, "row E"). Both represent [e].
This article needs additional citations for verification. (January 2021) |
e | |||
---|---|---|---|
| |||
transliteration | e | ||
hiragana origin | 衣 | ||
katakana origin | 江 | ||
Man'yōgana | 衣 依 愛 榎 曳 延 要 遥 叡 兄 江 吉 枝 | ||
spelling kana | 英語のエ (Eigo no "e") | ||
Note: The Man'yōgana represented either the "e" or "ye" mora, which merged in later pronunciation. |
え and エ originate, via man'yōgana, from the kanji 衣 and 江, respectively.
The archaic kana ゑ (we), as well as many non-initial occurrences of the character へ (he), have entered the modern Japanese language as え. The directional particle へ is today pronounced "e", though not written as え. Compare this to は (ha) and を (wo), which are pronounced "wa" and "o" when used as grammatical particles.
For the kana romanized sometimes as "e", see we (kana).
Scaled-down versions of the kana (ぇ, ェ) are used to express morae foreign to the Japanese language, such as ヴェ (ve). In several Okinawan writing systems, a small ぇ is also combined with the kana く(ku) and ふ (fu or hu) to form the digraphs くぇ kwe and ふぇ hwe.
In the Hepburn, Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki systems of romanization, both え and エ are transliterated as "e". In the Polivanov system of cyrillization, the kana are transliterated as "э".
![]() |
![]() |
The hiragana え is made with two strokes:
The katakana エ is made with three strokes:
This is also the way to make the Latin letter "I" (although the correct upper case form does not look like the lower case Latin letter "l")
Japanese radiotelephony alphabet | Wabun code |
英語のエ Eigo no "E" |
▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ |
![]() |
![]() | ||
Japanese Navy Signal Flag | Japanese semaphore | Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling) | Braille dots-124 Japanese Braille |
え / エ in Japanese Braille | |
---|---|
え / エ e | えい / エー ē/ei |
![]() | ![]() ![]() |
Preview | え | エ | エ | ㋓ | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | HIRAGANA LETTER E | KATAKANA LETTER E | HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER E | CIRCLED KATAKANA E | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 12360 | U+3048 | 12456 | U+30A8 | 65396 | U+FF74 | 13011 | U+32D3 |
UTF-8 | 227 129 136 | E3 81 88 | 227 130 168 | E3 82 A8 | 239 189 180 | EF BD B4 | 227 139 147 | E3 8B 93 |
Numeric character reference | え | え | エ | エ | エ | エ | ㋓ | ㋓ |
Shift JIS[1] | 130 166 | 82 A6 | 131 71 | 83 47 | 180 | B4 | ||
EUC-JP[2] | 164 168 | A4 A8 | 165 168 | A5 A8 | 142 180 | 8E B4 | ||
GB 18030[3] | 164 168 | A4 A8 | 165 168 | A5 A8 | 132 49 151 54 | 84 31 97 36 | 129 57 209 57 | 81 39 D1 39 |
EUC-KR[4] / UHC[5] | 170 168 | AA A8 | 171 168 | AB A8 | ||||
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[6] | 198 172 | C6 AC | 199 64 | C7 40 | ||||
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[7] | 198 238 | C6 EE | 199 164 | C7 A4 |
Preview | ぇ | ェ | ェ | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL E | KATAKANA LETTER SMALL E | HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER SMALL E | |||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 12359 | U+3047 | 12455 | U+30A7 | 65386 | U+FF6A |
UTF-8 | 227 129 135 | E3 81 87 | 227 130 167 | E3 82 A7 | 239 189 170 | EF BD AA |
Numeric character reference | ぇ | ぇ | ェ | ェ | ェ | ェ |
Shift JIS[1] | 130 165 | 82 A5 | 131 70 | 83 46 | 170 | AA |
EUC-JP[2] | 164 167 | A4 A7 | 165 167 | A5 A7 | 142 170 | 8E AA |
GB 18030[3] | 164 167 | A4 A7 | 165 167 | A5 A7 | 132 49 150 54 | 84 31 96 36 |
EUC-KR[4] / UHC[5] | 170 167 | AA A7 | 171 167 | AB A7 | ||
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[6] | 198 171 | C6 AB | 198 254 | C6 FE | ||
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[7] | 198 237 | C6 ED | 199 163 | C7 A3 |
Preview | 𛀀 | 𛀁 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | KATAKANA LETTER ARCHAIC E | HIRAGANA LETTER ARCHAIC YE | ||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 110592 | U+1B000 | 110593 | U+1B001 |
UTF-8 | 240 155 128 128 | F0 9B 80 80 | 240 155 128 129 | F0 9B 80 81 |
UTF-16 | 55340 56320 | D82C DC00 | 55340 56321 | D82C DC01 |
Numeric character reference | 𛀀 | 𛀀 | 𛀁 | 𛀁 |