I (kana)

い in hiragana or イ in katakana (romanised as i) is one of the Japanese kana each of which represents 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 sound order, it occupies the second position of the syllable chart, between あ and う. Additionally, it is the first letter in Iroha, before ろ. Both represent the sound [i]. In the Ainu language, katakana イ is written as y in their Latin-based syllable chart, and a small ィ after another katakana represents a diphthong.

Form	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal a/i/u/e/o (あ行 a-gyō)	i	い	イ
	ii ī	いい いー	イイ イー

Other additional forms
Form (y-) Rōmaji Hiragana Katakana (ya) (や) (ヤ) (yi) (いぃ) (イィ) (yu) (ゆ) (ユ) ye いぇ イェ (yo) (よ) (ヨ)

For the kana sometimes romanized as "i", see Wi (kana).

i
hiragana katakana
transliteration	i
hiragana origin	以
katakana origin	伊
spelling kana	いろはのイ (Iroha no "i")

Variant forms

Like other vowels, scaled-down versions of the kana (ぃ, ィ) are used to express sounds foreign to the Japanese language, such as フィ (fi). In some Okinawan writing systems, a small ぃ is also combined with the kana く (ku) and ふ to form the digraphs くぃ kwi and ふぃ hwi respectively, although the Ryukyu University system uses the kana ゐ/ヰ instead. In hentaigana, a variant of い is appeared that written as cursive Kanji 以.

Origin

い comes from the left part of the Kanji 以, while イ originates from the left part of the Kanji 伊.[1]

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing い

Stroke order in writing イ

Stroke order in writing い

The Hiragana い is made in two strokes:

1. At the top left, a curved vertical stroke, ending with a hook at the bottom.
2. At the top right, a shorter stroke, slightly curving in the opposite direction.

Stroke order in writing イ

The Katakana イ is made in two strokes:

1. At the top, a curved diagonal line going from right to left.
2. In the center of the last stroke, a vertical line going down.

Other communicative representations

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
いろはのイ Iroha no "I"	▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-12 Japanese Braille

• Full Braille representation

い / イ in Japanese Braille
い / イ i	いい / イー ī	+い / +ー chōon*

* When lengthening "-i" or "-e" syllables in Japanese braille, a chōon is always used, as is standard in katakana orthography, instead of adding the い / イ kana.

• Computer encodings

Character information

Preview	い		イ		ｲ		㋑
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER I		KATAKANA LETTER I		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER I		CIRCLED KATAKANA I
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	12356	U+3044	12452	U+30A4	65394	U+FF72	13009	U+32D1
UTF-8	227 129 132	E3 81 84	227 130 164	E3 82 A4	239 189 178	EF BD B2	227 139 145	E3 8B 91
Numeric character reference	い	い	イ	イ	ｲ	ｲ	㋑	㋑
Shift JIS[2]	130 162	82 A2	131 67	83 43	178	B2
EUC-JP[3]	164 164	A4 A4	165 164	A5 A4	142 178	8E B2
GB 18030[4]	164 164	A4 A4	165 164	A5 A4	132 49 151 52	84 31 97 34	129 57 209 55	81 39 D1 37
EUC-KR[5] / UHC[6]	170 164	AA A4	171 164	AB A4
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[7]	198 168	C6 A8	198 251	C6 FB
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[8]	198 234	C6 EA	199 126	C7 7E

Character information

Preview	ぃ		ィ		ｨ
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL I		KATAKANA LETTER SMALL I		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER SMALL I
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	12355	U+3043	12451	U+30A3	65384	U+FF68
UTF-8	227 129 131	E3 81 83	227 130 163	E3 82 A3	239 189 168	EF BD A8
Numeric character reference	ぃ	ぃ	ィ	ィ	ｨ	ｨ
Shift JIS[2]	130 161	82 A1	131 66	83 42	168	A8
EUC-JP[3]	164 163	A4 A3	165 163	A5 A3	142 168	8E A8
GB 18030[4]	164 163	A4 A3	165 163	A5 A3	132 49 150 52	84 31 96 34
EUC-KR[5] / UHC[6]	170 163	AA A3	171 163	AB A3
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[7]	198 167	C6 A7	198 250	C6 FA
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[8]	198 233	C6 E9	199 125	C7 7D

Footnotes

1. Where do the kana come from
2. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
3. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
4. Standardization Administration of China (SAC) (2005-11-18). GB 18030-2005: Information Technology—Chinese coded character set.
5. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
6. Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
7. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
8. van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.