Hiragana Letter Hi

Hiragana Letter Hi at U+3072 represents the Japanese hiragana syllable hi and belongs to the Hiragana block. It is a phonetic kana character, read as “hi,” used for native Japanese words, grammatical endings, and readings where hiragana is preferred over kanji or katakana. In ordinary Japanese writing, ひ appears in words such as ひと for “person” and ひる for “daytime” or “noon,” and in children’s books or language-learning material where words are written fully in kana. It is also used in furigana, the small pronunciation guides printed beside kanji, to show that a character or part of a word is read with the syllable hi. With diacritic marks it forms related sounds: び is read “bi,” and ぴ is read “pi.” This makes it part of a common kana series used in spelling Japanese vocabulary, names, onomatopoeia, and verb or adjective forms that need the h-, b-, or p-sound variants.