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  1. ゐ and ゑ. Looks like an odd looking hiragana, but i never seen it before in the hiragana list.
  2. ゝandゞ. What does it mean, and why there is a dakuten in the second one.
  3. ヶ. It looks like ケ. Maybe it is ケ. I only know that it is readed か or が. Example: 藤ヶ谷 (ふじがや).

― 檜原 クリスチャン

Christian台頭発
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1 Answers1

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In modern あいうえお, the column of わ is わいうえを, but it used to be わゐうゑを. The pronunciation of these were more like "we" and "way" as opposed to the normal い and え sound. I didn't know this myself, but apparently these old forms have disappeared as recent as 1946.

ゝ is a short-hand that means "repeating the previous letter", such as 学問のすゝめ (学問のすすめ). As you probably know, dakuten is composable decoration of a letter, and it can also decorate ゝ.

ヶ is an interesting one. I think its origin is at least in part katakana ケ, but I can't think of other katakanas that do this. Aside from the usage in 藤ヶ谷, which means 藤の丘, you also use ヶ to count objects, like 10ヶ.

Kohsuke Kawaguchi
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    For the last, we have some existing questions that explain where it came from: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/347/1478 –  Jun 01 '18 at 04:03
  • And this for the repeater character. It's kind of like a hiragana version of the repeater kanji 々 (for example, 時々＝時時＝ときどき). – ConMan Jun 01 '18 at 06:52
  • it used to be わゐうゑを See https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%84%E8%A1%8C%E3%81%84 - う had its own kana. – dROOOze Jun 02 '18 at 01:10