spockitty

ヰ ヱ

Archaic fun stuff! I'm always like "oh no not again" when I see them in lyrics lol. One day I won't be like magikarp with archaic, I swear. Soon™

Unclassified

1. hiragana "we" (historical kana)Obsolete term

Wikipedia definition

2. We (kana)ゑ, in hiragana, or ヱ in katakana, is a nearly obsolete Japanese kana. It is presumed that ゑ represented . It is thought that, after ゑ and え came to denote the same pronunciation as イェ in the Kamakura period, they came to be pronounced as the modern エ [e e]; there is also the view that the pronunciation difference between the two kana remained until the Taishō period.

ゐ

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Unclassified

1. hiragana "wi" (historical kana)Obsolete term

Wikipedia definition

2. Wi (kana)ゐ, in and that ゐ and い indicated different pronunciations until somewhere between the Kamakura period and the Taishō period when they both came to be pronounced [i i]. Along with the kana for we, (ゑ in hiragana, ヱ in katakana), this kana was deemed obsolete in Japanese in 1946, and replaced with い and イ. It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia and foreign words, the katakana form ウィ (U-) is preferred.