He (kana)
| he | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| |||
| Transliteration | he | ||
| Translit. with dakuten | be | ||
| Translit. with handakuten | pe | ||
| Hiragana origin | 部 | ||
| Katakana origin | 部 | ||
| Man'yōgana | 平 反 返 弁 弊 陛 遍 覇 部 辺 重 隔 閉 倍 陪 拝 戸 経 | ||
| Voiced man'yōgana | 弁 便 別 部 倍 毎 | ||
| Spelling kana | 平和のヘ Heiwa no "he" | ||
| Unicode | U+3078, U+30D8 | ||
| Braille | |||
| Note: This mora was historically pronounced as "pe", with one of two different vowel sounds, which later merged. | |||
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| Kana modifiers and marks | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Multi-moraic kana | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
へ, in hiragana, or ヘ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, which represents one mora. The [he] sound is the only sound that is written almost identically in hiragana and katakana and therefore confusable according to the Unicode Standard. In the Sakhalin dialect of the Ainu language, ヘ can be written as small ㇸ to represent a final [h] after an [e] sound (エㇸ [eh]).
It is usually pronounced [he] with the aspirate [h] before its vowel. It is also often used as a grammatical particle indicating direction, which makes only the vowel sound [e].
Though the two forms へ and ヘ are usually rendered with a small difference between them, in order to match better with the appearance of other hiragana or katakana characters, they can often be rendered identically. A reader is not expected to distinguish one from the other without contextual clues.
| Forms | Rōmaji | Hiragana | Katakana | Example words (with kanji) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Normal h- (は行 ha-gyō) |
he | へ | ヘ |
|
| hei hee hē |
へい, へぃ へえ, へぇ へー |
ヘイ, ヘィ ヘエ, ヘェ ヘー | ||
| Addition dakuten b- (ば行 ba-gyō) |
be | べ | ベ |
|
| bei bee bē |
べい, べぃ べえ, べぇ べー |
ベイ, ベィ ベエ, ベェ ベー | ||
| Addition handakuten p- (ぱ行 pa-gyō) |
pe | ぺ | ペ |
|
| pei pee pē |
ぺい, ぺぃ ぺえ, ぺぇ ぺー |
ペイ, ペィ ペエ, ペェ ペー |