| Char: | Japanese: ◌゙<br/>◌゚|italic=no |
| Dakuten and handakuten | |
| Unicode: |
|
The, colloquially, is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing).
The, colloquially, is a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should instead be pronounced with pronounced as /[p]/.
The kun'yomi pronunciation of the character (daku in on'yomi) is nigori; hence the daku-ten may also be called the nigori-ten. This character, meaning muddy or turbid, stems from historical Chinese phonology, where consonants were traditionally classified as clear (Chinese: 清 "voiceless"), lesser-clear (Chinese: 次清 "aspirated") and muddy (Chinese: 濁 "voiced"). (See: Middle Chinese § Initials)
Dakuten were used sporadically since the start of written Japanese; their use tended to become more common as time went on. The modern practice of using dakuten in all cases of voicing in all writing only came into being in the Meiji period.
The handakuten is an innovation by Portuguese Jesuits, who first used it in the Rakuyōshū.[1] These Jesuits needed to accurately transcribe Japanese sounds, which the Japanese tended to neglect by making no distinction between /h/, /b/ and /p/ in their own writing.
The dakuten resembles a quotation mark, while the handakuten is a small circle, similar to a degree sign, both placed at the top right corner of a kana character:
Both the dakuten and handakuten glyphs are drawn identically in hiragana and katakana scripts. The combining characters are rarely used in full-width Japanese characters, as Unicode and all common multibyte Japanese encodings provide precomposed glyphs for all possible dakuten and handakuten character combinations in the standard hiragana and katakana ranges. However, combining characters are required in half-width kana, which does not provide any precomposed characters in order to fit within a single byte.
The similarity between the dakuten and quotation marks (") is not a problem, as written Japanese uses corner brackets (「」).
The following table summarizes the phonetic shifts indicated by the dakuten and handakuten. Literally, syllables with dakuten are, while those without are . However, the handakuten (lit. "half-muddy mark") does not follow this pattern.
| None | Dakuten | Handakuten | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Japanese: か ka | Japanese: が ga | ||
| Japanese: さ sa | Japanese: ざ za | ||
| Japanese: た ta | Japanese: だ da | ||
| Japanese: は ha | Japanese: ば ba | Japanese: ぱ pa | |
| Japanese: ら ra | |||
| Japanese: わ wa |
(Yellow shading indicates non-standard use.)
Handakuten on ka, ki, ku, ke, ko (rendered as Japanese: か゚, き゚, く゚, け゚, こ゚) represent the sound of ng in singing (pronounced as /link/), which is an allophone of pronounced as //ɡ// in many dialects of Japanese. They are not used in normal Japanese writing, but may be used by linguists and in dictionaries (or to represent characters in fiction who speak that way). This is called . Another rare application of handakuten is on the r-series, to mark them as explicitly l: Japanese: ラ゚ pronounced as //la//, and so forth. This is only done in technical or pedantic contexts, as many Japanese speakers cannot tell the difference between r and l. Additionally, linguists sometimes use Japanese: ウ゚ to represent pronounced as //ɴ// in cases when speaker pronounces Japanese: う at the beginning of a word as a moraic nasal.[2]
In katakana only, the dakuten may also be added to the character Japanese: ウ u and a small vowel character to create a pronounced as /[v]/ sound, as in ヴァ va. However, a hiragana version of this character also exists, with somewhat sporadic compatibility across platforms (Japanese: ゔ). As pronounced as //v// does not exist in Japanese, this usage applies only to some modern loanwords and remains relatively uncommon, and e.g. Venus is typically transliterated as Japanese: ビーナス (bīnasu) instead of Japanese: ヴィーナス (vīnasu). Japanese speakers, however, pronounce both the same, with pronounced as /[b]/ or pronounced as /[β]/, an occasional allophone of intervocalic pronounced as //b//.[3]
An even less common method is to add dakuten to the w-series, reviving the mostly obsolete characters for pronounced as //wi// (Japanese: ヰ) and pronounced as //we// (Japanese: ヱ). pronounced as //vu// is represented by using /u/, as above; pronounced as //wo// becomes pronounced as //vo// despite its pronounced as //w// normally being silent. Precomposed characters exist for this method as well (pronounced as //va// Japanese: ヷ pronounced as //vi// Japanese: ヸ pronounced as //vu// Japanese: ヴ pronounced as //ve// Japanese: ヹ pronounced as //vo// Japanese: ヺ), although most IMEs do not have a convenient way to enter them.
In Ainu texts, handakuten can be used with the katakana Japanese: セ to make it a /t͡s/ sound, Japanese: セ゚ ce [t͡se] (which is interchangeable with Japanese: ツェ), and is used with small fu to represent a final p, Japanese: ㇷ゚. In addition, handakuten can be combined with either katakana Japanese: ツ or Japanese: ト (tsu and to) to make a [tu̜] sound, Japanese: ツ゚ or Japanese: ト゚.
In Miyakoan, handakuten can be used with Japanese: イ (normally [i]) to represent the vowel pronounced as /[ɨ]/.
In informal writing, dakuten is occasionally used on vowels to indicate a shocked or strangled articulation; for example, on Japanese: あ゙ or Japanese: ゔ. Dakuten can also be occasionally used with Japanese: ん (ん゙) to indicate a guttural hum, growl, or similar sound.
The dakuten can also be added to hiragana and katakana iteration marks, indicating that the previous kana is repeated with voicing:
| Type | None | Dakuten | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hiragana | Japanese: ゝ | Japanese: ゞ | |
| Katakana | Japanese: ヽ | Japanese: ヾ |
Both signs are relatively rare, but can occasionally be found in personal names such as Misuzu (Japanese: みすゞ) or brand names such as Isuzu (いすゞ). In these cases the pronunciation is identical to writing the kana out in full. A longer, multi-character iteration mark called the kunojiten, only used in vertical writing, may also have a dakuten added .
Voiced syllables and semi-voiced syllables do not have independent names in radiotelephony and are signified by the unvoiced name followed by "ni dakuten" or "ni handakuten".