We (kana)

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You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (September 2011) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,083 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:ゑ]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|ja|ゑ}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

we
hiragana katakana
transliteration	e, we
hiragana origin	恵
katakana origin	恵
Man'yōgana	廻 恵 面 咲
spelling kana	かぎのあるヱ Kagi no aru "e"
unicode	U+3091, U+30F1
braille

ゑ in hiragana, or ヱ in katakana, is an obsolete Japanese kana that is normally pronounced [e] in current-day Japanese. The combination of a W-column kana letter with "ゑ゙" in hiragana was introduced to represent [ve] in the 19th and 20th centuries.^{[citation needed]}

It is presumed that 'ゑ' represented [we] ^ⓘ, and that ゑ and え indicated different pronunciations until somewhere between the Kamakura and Taishō periods, when they both came to be pronounced as 'イェ' [je] ^ⓘ, later shifting to the modern 'エ' [e].^{[citation needed]} Along with the kana for wi ('ゐ' in hiragana, 'ヰ' in katakana), this kana was deemed obsolete in Japanese in 1946 and replaced with え and エ. It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia or foreign words, the katakana form 'ウェ' (U-[small-e]) is used, as in "ウェスト" for "west".

The kana still sees some modern-day usage as a stylistic variant of 'え/エ'. Ebisu is usually written as "えびす", but sometimes "ゑびす" like Kyoto Ebisu Shrine (京都ゑびす神社, Kyōto Webisu Jinja),^[1] and name of the beer Yebisu (ヱビス), which is actually pronounced "Ebisu". The Japanese title of the Rebuild of Evangelion series is Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition (ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版, Wevangeriwon Shin Gekijōban). VTuber Sakamata Chloe (沙花叉クロヱ) of Hololive Production uses Katakana ヱ (we) in place of the pronounced エ (e). Katakana ヱ is sometimes written with a dakuten, ヹ, to represent a /ve/ sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to write this, and the combination ヴェ is far more common. The Meiji-era Classical Japanese version of the Bible renders Jehovah as ヱホバ (Yehoba), and ヱ (ye) is also used to transcribe any Hebrew name spelled with Je in English (pronounced "ye" in Hebrew, though), such as Jephthah (ヱフタ, Yefuta); the modern Japanese version, on the other hand, only uses エ (e), hence エホバ (Ehoba) and エフタ (Efuta).

Hiragana ゑ is still used in several Okinawan orthographies for the syllable /we/. In the Ryūkyū University system, ゑ is also combined with a small ぃ (ゑぃ/ヱィ), to represent the sound /wi/. Katakana ヱ is used in Ainu for /we/.