(: , : ) is an obsolete (Japanese phonetic character) that is pronounced (same pronunciation as e (kana): ãÂÂ) in current-day Japanese.
It is presumed that represented , while and indicated different pronunciations until somewhere between the Kamakura and Taishà  periods, when they both came to be pronounced as , later shifting to the modern . The combination of ã or ã± with dakuten () were introduced to represent [ve] in the 19th and 20th centuries. Along with the kana for ( in , in ), this was deemed obsolete in Japanese in 1946 and replaced with and . It is now rare in everyday usage; in onomatopoeia or foreign words, the katakana form (U-[small-e]) is used, as in for "west".
The still sees some modern-day usage as a stylistic variant of . Ebisu is usually written as , but sometimes like , and name of the beer , which is actually pronounced "Ebisu". The Japanese title of the Rebuild of Evangelion series is which stylistically substitutes 㨠and 㪠with ã± and ã². VTuber Sakamata Chloe of Hololive Production uses Katakana ã± (we) in place of the pronounced 㨠(e). is sometimes written with a , , to represent a sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to write this, and the digraph is far more common. The Meiji-era Classical Japanese version of the Bible renders Jehovah as (Yehoba), and (ye) is also used to transcribe any Hebrew name spelled with Je in English (pronounced "ye" in Hebrew, though), such as ; the modern Japanese version, on the other hand, only uses (e), hence (Ehoba) and (Efuta).
is still used in several Okinawan orthographies for the mora . In the Ryà «kyà « University system, is also combined with a small (), to represent the sound . is used in Ainu for .
In wÃÂpuro rà ÂmajiâÂÂthat is, the string of letters used for input to produce ã or ã±âÂÂthe sequence is wye.
The is made with one stroke. It resembles a that continues with a double-humped shape underneath.
The is made with three strokes: