We (kana)

we
hiragana
japanese hiragana we
katakana
japanese katakana we
transliteratione, we
hiragana origin
katakana origin
Man'yōgana廻 恵 面 咲
spelling kanaかぎのあるヱ
Kagi no aru "e"
unicodeU+3091, U+30F1
braille⠖

in hiragana, or in katakana, is an obsolete Japanese kana that is normally pronounced [e] 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.[citation needed]

It is presumed that 'ゑ' represented [we] , and that and indicated different pronunciations until somewhere between the Kamakura and Taishō periods, when they both came to be pronounced as 'イェ' [je] , later shifting to the modern 'エ' [e].[citation needed] Along with the kana for wi ('ゐ' in hiragana, 'ヰ' in katakana), this kana was deemed obsolete in Japanese in 1946 and replaced with and . 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, Kyōto Webisu Jinja),[1] 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, Wevangeriwon Shin Gekijōban). VTuber Sakamata Chloe (沙花叉クロヱ) of Hololive Production uses Katakana ヱ (we) in place of the pronounced エ (e). Katakana is sometimes written with a dakuten, , to represent a /ve/ sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to write this, and the digraph ヴェ is far more common. The Meiji-era Classical Japanese version of the Bible renders Jehovah as ヱホバ (Yehoba), and (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, Yefuta); the modern Japanese version, on the other hand, only uses (e), hence エホバ (Ehoba) and エフタ (Efuta).

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