(Redirected from イ)
'い' in hiragana or 'イ' in katakana (
romanised ''i'') is one of the Japanese
kana that each respresent one
mora. い is based on the
sōsho style of the
kanji character 以, and イ is from the
radical (left part) of the kanji character 伊. In the modern Japanese system of alphabetical order, it occupies the second position of the alphabet, between
あ and
う. Additionally, it is the first letter in
Iroha, before ろ. In order to write the hiragana い, draw a curve, not entirely unlike a
parenthesis, downward stroke with a hook, and then draw a smaller, floating curve to the right side. The Unicode for い is U+3044, and the Unicode for イ is U+30A4.
It is
pronounced .
| Form | Rōmaji | Hiragana | Katakana |
|---|
Normal ''a''/''i''/''u''/''e''/''o'' (あ行 ''a-gyō'') | ''i'' | い | イ |
|---|
''ii'' ''ī'' | いい, いぃ いー | イイ, イィ イー |
| Other additional forms |
|---|
'Form (''y-'')'| (''ya'') | (や) | (ヤ) | | (''yi'') | (い) | (イ) | | (''yu'') | (ゆ) | (ユ) | | ''ye'' | いぇ | イェ | | (''yo'') | (よ) | (ヨ) | |
Variant forms
Scaled-down versions of the kana (ぃ, ィ) are used to express morae foreign to the Japanese language, such as フィ (fi).
Strokes
 Stroke order in writing い |  Stroke order in writing イ |
Representations in other writing systems
In
Japanese Braille, い or イ is represented as:
The
Morse code for い or イ, is ・-.
In
Japanese phonetic alphabet, one would say "いろはのイ" (Iroha no I.)