4.1.2. Is there a kana symbol for ye or yi?

"Yebisu" beer: the origin of the confusion?

No, there is no hiragana or katakana for either of these, because there is no "ye" or "yi" sound in modern Japanese. That is why many Japanese speakers have difficulty saying words like "year" and "yeast" in English.

There were originally kana in the man'yougana system (see 4.3.11. What is man'yougana? ) for ye, "江", and a kana ei (曵) that was maybe also ye. (one kana per "sound" is a relatively modern development.)

The distinction between e and ye was lost by the time of the development of hiragana and katakana; many people think the ye pronunciation won out (and that is the one used in southern dialects, to a large degree), to change to e during the Edo period.

The kokugakusha of the Edo period investigated the spelling of the late Nara/early Heian period and it came to be reinstated as rekishiteki kanadukai (歴史的仮名遣い) (`historical kana usage') and is what was taught--until about 1950--in Japanese schools. Wa, wi, and wo (vs. ha, hi, ho and i, o) were also revived as spelling distinctions, something like distinguishing "right" and "rite" in English, or "knew" and "new." However, there was no attempt to revive the e/ye distinction in spelling.

Edited from posts by Bart Mathias and NAKANO Yasuaki.

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