E (kana)

Infobox_kana
Hiragana

Katakana

Transliteration = e
Hiragana Manyogana = 衣
Katakana Manyogana = 江
Unicode = U+3047
Footnotes =

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) IPA|/e/.

Derivation

え and エ originate, via man'yōgana, from the kanji and , 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.

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).

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".

troke order

The hiragana え is made with two strokes:
#At the top, a short diagonal stroke proceeding downward and to the right.
#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:
# At the top, a horizontal stroke from left to right.
# A downward vertical stroke starting in the center of the first stroke.
# At the bottom, a horizontal stroke parallel to the first stroke, and touching the second. This stroke is usually slightly longer than the first.

Other communicative representations

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