He (kana)
He is one of the Japanese kana, which represents one mora. The 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 after an sound.
It is usually pronounced with the aspirate before its vowel. It is also often used as a grammatical particle indicating direction, which makes only the vowel sound ; when used this way, it is sometimes romanised as
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 |
| Normal h- | he | へ | ヘ |
|
| Normal h- | 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- | be | べ | ベ |
|
| Addition dakuten b- | 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- | pe | ぺ | ペ |
|
| Addition handakuten p- | pei pee pē | ぺい, ぺぃ ぺえ, ぺぇ ぺー | ペイ, ペィ ペエ, ペェ ペー |
|
Stroke order
The stroke order is similar between hiragana and katakana.Other communicative representations
- Full Braille representation
- Computer encodings