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Duolingo introduces the sound ''we'' as ウェ.

According to my phonetics chart this should be ''ue'' read as one mora, not
''we''.

I did a bit of research and discovered that ゑ and ヱ used to exist for what I
think of as ''we''.

Is ウェ read the same as ヱ was read ?

Is ''we'' the official romaji for ウェ ?
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2021-02-15T20:48:11.587
84211
2021-02-17T07:24:14.497
29665
question
pronunciation
Usage of the sound ウェ ''we'' in Duolingo
ウェ belongs to so-called [extended
katakana](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/19226/5010). That is, this
spelling is only used for approximating the pronunciation of foreign words,
and no traditional Japanese words (wago and kango) contains this sound.

This also means there is no "official" romaji for this sound. Both kunrei and
Hepburn systems have never defined how to romanize ウェ. Still, since we use ウェ
mainly to represent the sound of "we" as in "wet" or "Wednesday" in English,
you could say `we` is the _de facto_ standard romaji for ウェ. Of course `ue` is
not a reasonable option here because it's not distinguishable from two-mora
ウエ.

As for ヱ, yes, in ancient times, it _**was**_ pronounced like how we pronounce
ウェ today. But its pronunciation became closer to イェ (as in English "yes")
already around the 13th century, and エ in the 18th century. As I said, wago we
use today no longer contains the ウェ sound.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-02-15T21:35:36.383
84213
2021-02-17T07:24:14.497
2021-02-17T07:24:14.497
5010
5010
84211
answer