れ, in

hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" ori ...

, or レ in

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

, is one of the Japanese

kana The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most pr ...

, each of which represents one mora. The hiragana is written in two strokes, while katakana in one. Both represent the sound . The shapes of these kana have origins in the character 礼. The

Ainu language Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu, is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isolate ...

uses a small katakana ㇾ to represent a final ''r'' sound after an ''e'' sound (エㇾ ''er''). The combination of an R-column kana letter with

handakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing). The ...

゜- れ゚ in hiragana, and レ゚ in katakana was introduced to represent ein the early 20th century.

Stroke order

Other communicative representations

See also

References