Small Kana Extension

Small Kana Extension is a Unicode block containing additional small variants for the Hiragana and Katakana syllabaries,^[3] in addition to those in the Hiragana, Katakana and Katakana Phonetic Extensions blocks.

Small Kana Extension
Range	U+1B130..U+1B16F (64 code points)
Plane	SMP
Scripts	Hiragana (4 char.) Katakana (5 char.)
Assigned	9 code points
Unused	55 reserved code points
Unicode version history
12.0 (2019)	7 (+7)
15.0 (2022)	9 (+2)
Unicode documentation
Code chart ∣ Web page
Note: [1][2]

Block

Small Kana Extension[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+1B13x

𛄲

U+1B14x

U+1B15x

𛅐

𛅑

𛅒

𛅕

U+1B16x

𛅤

𛅥

𛅦

𛅧

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 16.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Unassigned code points in the U+1B130 to U+1B163 range were set aside for possible future small kana.^[4][5][6]

History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Small Kana Extension block:

Version	Final code points[lower-alpha 1]	Count	L2 ID	WG2 ID	Document
12.0	U+1B150..1B152, 1B164..1B167	7	L2/16-334		Sim, CheonHyeong (2016-11-04), Hiragana and Katakana (Small Letters)
			L2/16-354		Yamaguchi, Ryusei (2016-11-07), Proposal to add Kana small letters
			L2/16-358R	N4803	Lunde, Ken (2016-11-22), L2/16-334 & L2/16-354 Feedback (small kana)
			L2/16-325		Moore, Lisa (2016-11-18), "C.14 Kana", UTC #149 Minutes
			L2/17-016		Moore, Lisa (2017-02-08), "Consensus 150-C18", UTC #150 Minutes
				N4953 (pdf, doc)	"M66.07i", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 66, 2018-03-23
			L2/17-353		Anderson, Deborah; Whistler, Ken (2017-10-02), "N.1. Small Kana Extension code block and code point changes", WG2 Consent Docket
			L2/17-362		Moore, Lisa (2018-02-02), "Consensus 153-C13", UTC #153 Minutes
15.0	U+1B132, 1B155	2	L2/10-468R2	N3987	Lunde, Ken (2011-02-09), Proposal to add two kana characters
			L2/11-016		Moore, Lisa (2011-02-15), "Consensus 126-C7", UTC #126 / L2 #223 Minutes, Accept U+1B002 HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL KO and U+1B003 KATAKANA LETTER SMALL KO for encoding in a future version of the standard.
			L2/11-228	N4087	Comment on "two kana" proposal, 2011-05-30
				N4108	Sekiguchi, Masahiro (2011-06-08), A response regarding small ko
				N4103	"11.2.7 Two additional Kana characters", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 58, 2012-01-03
			L2/16-354		Yamaguchi, Ryusei (2016-11-07), Proposal to add Kana small letters
			L2/16-358R	N4803	Lunde, Ken (2016-11-22), L2/16-334 & L2/16-354 Feedback (small kana)
			L2/16-325		Moore, Lisa (2016-11-18), "Consensus 149-C14", UTC #149 Minutes, Move HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL KO to U+1B127 and KATAKANA LETTER SMALL KO to U+1B128.
			L2/17-353		Anderson, Deborah; Whistler, Ken (2017-10-02), "N.2. SMALL KO characters", WG2 Consent Docket, WG2 agreed to remove ... two characters from the Small Kana Extension block
			L2/20-015R		Moore, Lisa (2020-05-14), "Consensus 162-C21", Draft Minutes of UTC Meeting 162, Change the codepoint for HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL KO from U+1B127 to U+1B132, and KATAKANA LETTER SMALL KO from U+1B12B to U+1B155.
Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names

Fonts

As of 28 March 2024, 2 fonts are known to support the 15.0 Small Kana Extension range:

• BabelStone Han.^[7]
• Nishiki-teki.^[8]

Other fonts

• FRBTaiwaneseKana supports 𛅦 (U+1B166), but none of the other 8 characters.

See also

• Hiragana (Unicode block)
• Katakana (Unicode block)
• Kana Extended-A (Unicode block)
• Kana Extended-B (Unicode block)
• Kana Supplement (Unicode block)

References

1. "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
2. "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
3. "Chapter 18.4: 18.4 Hiragana and Katakana". The Unicode Standard, Version 12.0 (PDF). Mountain View, CA: Unicode, Inc. June 2018. ISBN 978-1-936213-22-1.
4. Suignard, Michel (2017-06-05). "N4825: Additional repertoire for ISO/IEC 10646:2017 (5th ed.) Amendment 2.0" (PDF). p. 16.
5. McGowan, Rick (2017-05-03), "Feedback on L2/17-091 and small kana", L2/17-105: Comments on Public Review Issues (Jan 18 - May 01, 2017)
6. "L2/17-091: Japanese National Body Contribution on Small Kana Characters" (PDF). 2017-04-07.
7. "BabelStone Han". Babelstone Fonts. 15 March 2024. Retrieved 28 March 2024. Small Kana Extension - 1B130..1B16F - 9 out of 9 characters - Full-width
8. "TrueType font にしき的フォント『 Nishiki-teki 』Version 3.99t (2024-03-26)" (in Japanese). Umihotaru. 26 March 2024. Retrieved 28 March 2024.