Katakana Letter Ve

Katakana Letter Ve at U+30F9 represents the foreign syllable “ve” in Japanese katakana writing. It belongs to the Katakana block and is formed historically from the katakana letter e with a voiced mark, used when Japanese text needs a closer spelling for a non-Japanese v sound. Its main use is in older or specialized transliterations of foreign words and names, especially where writers want to distinguish ve from the more common ベ, which is pronounced “be” in ordinary Japanese. For example, it may appear in careful renderings of names or terms containing “ve,” though modern Japanese usually writes the v-series with ヴ plus a small vowel, as in ヴェ for “ve.” Because this character is uncommon in contemporary Japanese, readers are more likely to encounter it in legacy text, dictionaries, character charts, typography tests, or discussions of kana representation. It can be confused in purpose with the much more familiar ヴェ sequence, so search and text matching may not treat the two spellings as equivalent.