い in hiragana or イ in katakana (IPA: ) is one of the Japanese kana that each respresent one mora. It is pronounced . い is based on the sōsho style of kanji 以, and イ is from the radical(left part) of kanji 伊. In the modern Japanese system of alphabetical order, it is occupies the second position of the alphabet, between あ and う. Additionally, it is the first letter in Iroha, before ろ. In order to write the hiragana い, draw a curve, not entirely unlike a parenthesis, stroke upward from the bottom, and then draw a smaller, floating curve to the side. The Unicode for い is U+3044, and the Unicode for イ is U+30A4. It is pronounced in English as "E" as in the e in leek.

Variant forms

Scaled-down versions of the kana (ぃ, ィ) are used to express morae foreign to the Japanese language, such as フィ (fi).

Strokes

Alternative forms

In Japanese Braille, い or イ is represented as:

The Morse code for い or イ, is ・－.

In Japanese phonetic alphabet, one would say "いろはのイ" (Iroha no I.)

Kana

い | い | い | い | い