In Japanese writing, the kana え (hiragana) and エ (katakana) (romanised e) occupy the fourth place, between う and お, in the modern Gojūon (五十音) system of collating kana. In the Iroha, they occupy the 34th, between こ and て. In the table at right (ordered by columns, from right to left), え lies in the first column (あ行, "column A") and the fourth row (え段, "row E"). Both represent Close-mid front unrounded vowel.

Derivation

え and エ originate, via man'yōgana, from the kanji 衣 and 江, respectively. The archaic kana ゑ (we), as well as many non-initial occurrences of the character へ (he), have entered the modern Japanese language as え. The directional particle へ is today pronounced "e", though not written as え. Compare this to は (ha) and を (wo), which are pronounced "wa" and "o" when used as grammatical particles. For the kana romanized sometimes as "e", see we (kana).

Variant forms

Scaled-down versions of the kana (ぇ, ェ) are used to express morae foreign to the Japanese language, such as ヴェ (ve). In several Okinawan writing systems, a small ぇ is also combined with the kana く(ku) and ふ (fu or hu) to form the digraphs くぇ kwe and ふぇ hwe.

Transliteration

In th**e** H**epburn, Kunrei-shiki and Nihon-shiki systems of romanization, both え and エ are** translit**erated as "e". In the Polivanov system of cyrillization, the kana are transliterated as "э**".

Stroke order

The hiragana え is made with two strokes: The katakana エ is made with three strokes: This is also the way to make the Latin letter "I" (although the correct upper case form does not look like the lower case Latin letter "l")

Other communicative representations