hyu / ひゅ
The middle HY combined kana — ひ plus a small ゅ becomes 'hyu', a single syllable. The rarest yōon in the entire chart — appears mostly in loanwords and wind onomatopoeia.
Pronunciation
The compound character ひゅ represents the syllable 'hyu', formed by combining ひ (hi) with a small ゅ. It is pronounced as a single syllable 'hyu'.
ひゅ is ひ (hi) plus a small ゅ (yu). Together they make a single syllable /hyu/ — the palatalized version of /h/ + /u/, similar to the start of English "huge". It's the rarest yōon in the entire hiragana chart — it appears almost exclusively in loanwords from European languages (ヒューマン, hyuuman, "human") and in onomatopoeia for whistling or rushing wind (ひゅう, hyuu, the whoosh of wind; ひゅるひゅる, hyuru-hyuru, "whistling"). In native vocabulary you'll see it almost nowhere — making it the one yōon you can safely deprioritize.
How to write ひゅ
Trace ひゅ on the canvas at the top of the page. Animated arrows show each stroke's direction; trace along them and the stroke fills in. Each numbered step below explains what that stroke does.
Write ひ exactly: a single flowing stroke.
Write a small ゅ next to ひ. Stroke 2 is the small looping body (a tiny tear-drop); stroke 3 is the horizontal anchor crossing through it. Keep ゅ at roughly half the height of ひ.
Origin
ひゅ is the written combination of ひ (from 比, hi) and a small ゆ (from 由, yu). It's so rare in native Japanese that some dictionaries note its main modern function is to transliterate foreign "hyu" sounds — making ひゅ one of the youngest functional yōon in the chart.
Common words starting with ひゅ
Printable practice sheet
Print this worksheet to practice writing ひゅ by hand — the top row shows the stroke order to trace, then fill the blank squares.
Lock it into memory
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