| Hiragana Image: | Hiragana_I_01.svg |
| Katakana Image: | Japanese_Katakana_kyokashotai_YI.svg |
| Transliteration: | yi |
| Hiragana Manyogana: | 以 |
| Katakana Manyogana: | 以 |
| Flag1: | 9 |
| Flag2: | 3 |
| Flag3: | 1 |
Yi (hiragana: Japanese: , katakana: Japanese: ) is a Japanese mora or a kana used to write it, though it has never been in standard use.[1]
It is presumed that yi would have represented pronounced as /ja/.[2] Along with Japanese: [[Ye (kana)|]] (ye) and Japanese: [[Wu (kana)|]] (wu), the mora yi has no officially recognized kana, as these morae do not occur in native Japanese words; however, during the Meiji period, linguists almost unanimously agreed on the kana for yi, ye, and wu. Japanese: (yi) and Japanese: (wu) are thought to have never occurred as morae in Japanese, and Japanese: (ye) was merged with Japanese: [[E (kana)|え]] and Japanese: [[E (kana)|エ]] as a result of regular historical sound changes.
In the Edo period and the Meiji period, some Japanese linguists tried to separate kana i and kana yi. The shapes of characters differed with each linguist. Japanese: and Japanese: were just two of many glyphs.
They were phonetic symbols to fill in the blanks of the gojuon table, but Japanese people did not separate them in normal writing.
These suggestions were not accepted.
The hiragana form of this kana is encoded into Unicode as HENTAIGANA LETTER I-1, with the position of U+1B006, while the katakana is encoded as KATAKANA LETTER ARCHAIC YI, in the position U+1B120.[12]