transliteration hi katakana origin 比 | hiragana origin 比 | |
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ひ, in hiragana, or ヒ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one mora. Both can be written in two strokes, sometimes one for hiragana, and both are phonemically /hi/ although for phonological reasons, the actual pronunciation is [çi], the sound would be nearer to be transcribed "hyi" in ro-maji. The pronunciation of the voiceless palatal fricative [ç] is similar to that of the English word hue [çuː] for some speakers.
In the Sakhalin dialect of the Ainu language, ヒ can be written as small ㇶ to represent a final h sound after an i sound (イㇶ ih). Along with other extended katakana, this was developed to represent sounds in Ainu that are not present in standard Japanese katakana.
Other representations
References
Hi (kana) Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA