He (kana)
Character of the Japanese writing system
He (hiragana: へ, katakana: ヘ) 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]; when used this way, it is sometimes romanised as '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 |
01Stroke order
The stroke order is similar between hiragana and katakana.
02Other communicative representations
| Japanese radiotelephony alphabet | Wabun code |
| 平和のヘ Heiwa no "He" |
▄ ⓘ |
| Japanese Navy Signal Flag | Japanese semaphore | Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling) | Braille dots-12346 Japanese Braille |
- Full Braille representation
| へ / ヘ in Japanese Braille | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| へ / ヘ he | べ / ベ be | ぺ / ペ pe | へい / ヘー hē/hei | べい / ベー bē/bei | ぺい / ペー pē/pei |
| Preview | へ | ヘ | ﾍ | ㇸ | ㋬ | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | HIRAGANA LETTER HE | KATAKANA LETTER HE | HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER HE | KATAKANA LETTER SMALL HE | CIRCLED KATAKANA HE | |||||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 12408 | U+3078 | 12504 | U+30D8 | 65421 | U+FF8D | 12792 | U+31F8 | 13036 | U+32EC |
| UTF-8 | 227 129 184 | E3 81 B8 | 227 131 152 | E3 83 98 | 239 190 141 | EF BE 8D | 227 135 184 | E3 87 B8 | 227 139 172 | E3 8B AC |
| Numeric character reference | へ | へ | ヘ | ヘ | ﾍ | ﾍ | ㇸ | ㇸ | ㋬ | ㋬ |
| Shift JIS (plain) | 130 214 | 82 D6 | 131 119 | 83 77 | 205 | CD | ||||
| Shift JIS-2004 | 130 214 | 82 D6 | 131 119 | 83 77 | 205 | CD | 131 244 | 83 F4 | ||
| EUC-JP (plain) | 164 216 | A4 D8 | 165 216 | A5 D8 | 142 205 | 8E CD | ||||
| EUC-JIS-2004 | 164 216 | A4 D8 | 165 216 | A5 D8 | 142 205 | 8E CD | 166 246 | A6 F6 | ||
| GB 18030 | 164 216 | A4 D8 | 165 216 | A5 D8 | 132 49 154 49 | 84 31 9A 31 | 129 57 189 50 | 81 39 BD 32 | ||
| EUC-KR / UHC | 170 216 | AA D8 | 171 216 | AB D8 | ||||||
| Big5 (non-ETEN kana) | 198 220 | C6 DC | 199 112 | C7 70 | ||||||
| Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS) | 199 95 | C7 5F | 199 212 | C7 D4 | ||||||
| Preview | べ | ベ | ぺ | ペ | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | HIRAGANA LETTER BE | KATAKANA LETTER BE | HIRAGANA LETTER PE | KATAKANA LETTER PE | ||||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 12409 | U+3079 | 12505 | U+30D9 | 12410 | U+307A | 12506 | U+30DA |
| UTF-8 | 227 129 185 | E3 81 B9 | 227 131 153 | E3 83 99 | 227 129 186 | E3 81 BA | 227 131 154 | E3 83 9A |
| Numeric character reference | べ | べ | ベ | ベ | ぺ | ぺ | ペ | ペ |
| Shift JIS | 130 215 | 82 D7 | 131 120 | 83 78 | 130 216 | 82 D8 | 131 121 | 83 79 |
| EUC-JP | 164 217 | A4 D9 | 165 217 | A5 D9 | 164 218 | A4 DA | 165 218 | A5 DA |
| GB 18030 | 164 217 | A4 D9 | 165 217 | A5 D9 | 164 218 | A4 DA | 165 218 | A5 DA |
| EUC-KR / UHC | 170 217 | AA D9 | 171 217 | AB D9 | 170 218 | AA DA | 171 218 | AB DA |
| Big5 (non-ETEN kana) | 198 221 | C6 DD | 199 113 | C7 71 | 198 222 | C6 DE | 199 114 | C7 72 |
| Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS) | 199 96 | C7 60 | 199 213 | C7 D5 | 199 97 | C7 61 | 199 214 | C7 D6 |
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “He (kana)”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Katakana ヘ stroke order animation.gif by Sirgazil, CC0
- ヘ-bw.png by Made by me, M4RC0, using Photoshop. We are making this kind of picture following the protocol of the section : Bitmap Image (PNG), CC BY-SA 2.0
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