I (kana)

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

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 alphabetical order, it occupies the second position of the alphabet, 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 alphabet, and a small ィ after another katakana represents a diphthong.

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.

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

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.

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

• Computer encodings

• Braille

い / イ in Japanese Braille
い / イ i	いい / イー ī

• Japanese semaphore

The Morse code for い or イ, is ・－.

In Japanese phonetic alphabet, one would say "いろはのイ" (Iroha no I.)

Footnotes

Look up い, ぃ, イ, or ィ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.