I posted this a good while ago on Facebook but I'll just post it here before it gets drowned in everything else XD

Rare Japanese characters to come by that I forgot about until my recent class session. Mind that the 2nd character in paired syllables are smaller on purpose, I ain't gonna explain why here... -

•Very rarely used or used for foreign romanization

• Vu: ゔ, katakana ヴ, it is not a native sound, so to say 'v' only exist in writing foreign words, and this can be combined to the regular vowels to make Va, Vi, Ve, Vo.

• We: ゑ, katakana ヱ, was sometimes written/pronounced as イェ [je], now written as simply ウェ. Very rarely ヹ [ve] is used but ヴェ is easier and more common on keyboard input.

• Wi: ゐ, katakana ヰ, now just written as ウィ. Very rarely ヸ is used but ヴィ is easier and more common.

•Characters never standardized or considered official in modern Japanese alphabet

• Wu: 㐵, katakana 于, it is just う/ウ as they are too similar in pronunciation for the Japanese language to consider it a unique enough sound, as with the following syllables. Easily found by searching わ行う [WaGyouU].

• Ye: Easily found by searching it as や行え [YaGyouE] and found in old writing (Yedo Period but was left as Edo). Now written/pronounced as a fluent 'ie' and IT IS NOT a transliteration for Japanese origin words (English words like Yen when in Japanese it's really written/pronounced as えん [En]).

• Ye Hiragana: 𛀁 Image

• Ye Katakana: written as katakana E エ

• Yi: Easily found by searching it as や行い [YaGyouI], now written/pronounced as イ [i] or a slightly transitional いい [ii]. So names/words like Ying are usually simply written as イン [in].

• Yi Hiragana: Image

• Yi Katakana: Image

#text #kotext