I (kana)
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transliteration | i | |||
hiragana origin | 以 | |||
katakana origin | 伊 | |||
spelling kana |
いろはのイ (Iroha no "i") |
kana gojūon | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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い in hiragana or イ in katakana (romanised as i) is one of the Japanese kana each of which represents one mora. い is based on the sōsho style of the kanji character 以, and イ is from the radical (left part) of the kanji character 伊. In the modern Japanese system of alphabetical order, it occupies the second position of the alphabet, between あ and う. Additionally, it is the first letter in Iroha, before ろ. Both represent the sound [i]. In the Ainu language, katakana イ is written as y in their Latin-based alphabet, and a small ィ after another katakana represents a diphthong.
Form | Rōmaji | Hiragana | Katakana |
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Normal a/i/u/e/o (あ行 a-gyō) |
i | い | イ |
ii ī |
いい いー |
イイ イー |
Other additional forms | ||||||||||||||||||
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Variant forms
Like other vowels, scaled-down versions of the kana (ぃ, ィ) are used to express sounds foreign to the Japanese language, such as フィ (fi). In some Okinawan writing systems, a small ぃ is also combined with the kana く (ku) and ふ to form the digraphs くぃ kwi and ふぃ hwi respectively, although the Ryukyu University system uses the kana ゐ/ヰ instead.
Origin
い comes from the left part of the Kanji 以, while イ originates from the left part of the Kanji 伊.[1]
Stroke order
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The Hiragana い is made in two strokes:
- At the top left, a curved vertical stroke, ending with a hook at the bottom.
- At the top right, a shorter stroke, slightly curving in the opposite direction.
The Katakana イ is made in two strokes:
- At the top, a curved diagonal line going from right to left.
- In the center of the last stroke, a vertical line going down.
Other communicative representations
Character | い | イ | イ | |||
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Unicode name | HIRAGANA LETTER I | KATAKANA LETTER I | HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER I | |||
Encodings | decimal | hex | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
Unicode | 12356 | U+3044 | 12452 | U+30A4 | 65394 | U+FF72 |
UTF-8 | 227 129 132 | E3 81 84 | 227 130 164 | E3 82 A4 | 239 189 178 | EF BD B2 |
Numeric character reference | い | い | イ | イ | イ | イ |
Shift JIS | 130 162 | 82 A2 | 131 67 | 83 43 | 178 | B2 |
Character | ぃ | ィ | ィ | |||
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Unicode name | HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL I | KATAKANA LETTER SMALL I | HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER SMALL I | |||
Encodings | decimal | hex | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
Unicode | 12355 | U+3043 | 12451 | U+30A3 | 65384 | U+FF68 |
UTF-8 | 227 129 131 | E3 81 83 | 227 130 163 | E3 82 A3 | 239 189 168 | EF BD A8 |
Numeric character reference | ぃ | ぃ | ィ | ィ | ィ | ィ |
Shift JIS | 130 161 | 82 A1 | 131 66 | 83 42 | 168 | A8 |
- Braille
い / イ in Japanese Braille | |
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い / イ i | いい / イー ī |
The Morse code for い or イ, is ・-.
In Japanese phonetic alphabet, one would say "いろはのイ" (Iroha no I.)
Footnotes
Look up い, ぃ, イ, or ィ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |