Friday, 31 January 2014

Just discovered obsolete kana!


I was in the middle of finding the translation for the word いた when the Microsoft IME offered an alternative kana translation that looks like this: ゐ. This was my face (O_o) What is that!? So I hurriedly typed it into google to find out more and Wikipedia tells me this is one of a few obsolete kana and it is pronounced "wi". Then I discovered 'we' : ゑ. I especially like this one, it looks kind of like an Egyptian hieroglyph. I had always wondered why there were only 2 kana beginning with the 'w' sound. It makes me wonder where 'wu' is now...I need to do more investigating.

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