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Yi (hiragana: 𛀆, katakana: 𛄠) is a Japanese mora or a kana used to write it, though it has never been in standard use.[1]
History
It is presumed that yi would have represented [ji].[2] Along with 𛀁 (ye) and 𛄟 (wu), the mora yi has no officially recognized kana, as these morae do not occur in native Japanese words; however, during the Meiji period, linguists almost unanimously agreed on the kana for yi, ye, and wu. 𛀆 (yi) and 𛄟 (wu) are thought to have never occurred as morae in Japanese, and 𛀁 (ye) was merged with え and エ as a result of regular historical sound changes.
Characters
In the Edo period and the Meiji period, some Japanese linguists tried to separate kana i and kana yi. The shapes of characters differed with each linguist. 𛀆 and 𛄠 were just two of many glyphs.
They were phonetic symbols to fill in the blanks of the gojuon table, but Japanese people did not separate them in normal writing.
The hiragana form of this kana is encoded into Unicode as HENTAIGANA LETTER I-1, with the position of U+1B006, while the katakana is encoded as KATAKANA LETTER ARCHAIC YI, in the position U+1B120.[12]
