Japanese/Kana/Lessons/Katakana/Lesson 11

In this lesson you are going to learn how to read and write ヰ and ヱ. These characters are not in modern Japanese but because they were legitimate characters before, one sees them in old Japanese text. ヰ It is pronounced the same as "イ", but in ancient times there was a clear difference. Scholars guess that the sound was something like "ウィ". Not normally seen in modern Japanese. Occasionally, ウイスキー (whiskey) is written as ウヰスキー. ヱ It is pronounced the same as "エ", but in ancient times there was a clear difference. Scholars guess that the sound was something like "ウェ". ヱビス - Ebisu, one of the seven lucky gods.