Ke (kana)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Ke" kana – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

ke
hiragana katakana
transliteration	ke
translit. with dakuten	ge
translit. with handakuten	(nge)
hiragana origin	計
katakana origin	介
Man'yōgana	祁 家 計 係 價 結 鶏 気 既 毛 飼 消
Voiced Man'yōgana	下 牙 雅 夏 義 気 宜 礙 削
spelling kana	景色のケ (Keshiki no "ke")
Note: These Man'yōgana originally represented morae with one of two different vowel sounds, which merged in later pronunciation.

け, (in hiragana) or ケ, (in katakana) is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. Both represent [ke]. The shape of these kana come from the kanji 計 and 介, respectively.

A dakuten may be added to this character; this changes it to げ in hiragana, ゲ in katakana, ge in Hepburn romanization and the pronunciation shifts to [ɡe] in initial positions and varying between [ŋe] and [ɣe] in the middle of words.

A handakuten (゜) does not occur with ke in normal Japanese text, but it may be used by linguists to indicate a nasal pronunciation [ŋe].