え

Hiragana	Katakana
Transliteration:	e
Hiragana Man'yōgana:	衣
Katakana Man'yōgana:	江
Unicode:	U+3047
kana - gojūon n wa ra ya ma ha na ta sa ka a tsu wi ri mi hi ni chi shi ki i ゛ ru yu mu fu nu tsu su ku u ー we re me he ne te se ke e wo ro yo mo ho no to so ko o

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 (IPA) /e/.

[edit] Derivation

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.

When initial or following /i/, many speakers give the letter an initial glide, pronouncing it /^je/, leading to Romanizations such as "yen", "Yedo", "Yebisu", and so forth.

[edit] Variant forms

Scaled-down versions of the kana (ぇ, ェ) are used to express morae foreign to the Japanese language, such as ヴェ (ve).

[edit] Transliteration

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".

[edit] Stroke order

The hiragana え is made with two strokes:

1. At the top, a short diagonal stroke proceeding downward and to the right.
2. At the bottom, a stroke composed of a horizontal line, a diagonal proceeding downward and to the left, and a rightward stroke resembling a tilde (~).

The katakana エ is made with three strokes:

1. At the top, a horizontal stroke from left to right.
2. A downward vertical stroke starting in the center of the first stroke.
3. At the bottom, a horizontal stroke parallel to the first stroke, and touching the second. This stroke is usually slightly longer than the first.

[edit] Other communicative representations

Look up え, ぇ, エ, ェ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Braille:

• Phonetic alphabet: 「英語のエ」 ("e as in eigo")
• Morse code: －・－－－