Dakuten and handakuten

The dakuten (Japanese: 濁点, lit. "voicing mark"), colloquially ten-ten (点々, "dots"), is a diacritic sign 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 handakuten (半濁点, lit. "half voicing mark"), colloquially maru (丸, "circle"), is a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should instead be pronounced with [p].

History

The kun'yomi pronunciation of the character 濁 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 (清 "voiceless"), lesser-clear (次清 "aspirated") and muddy (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.

Glyphs

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:

• U+3099 ◌゙ COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA VOICED SOUND MARK
• U+309A ◌゚ COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK

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 (「」).

Phonetic shifts

The following table summarizes the phonetic shifts indicated by the dakuten and handakuten. Literally, syllables with dakuten are "muddy sounds" (濁音, dakuon), while those without are "clear sounds" (清音, seion). However, the handakuten (lit. "half-muddy mark") does not follow this pattern.

none	dakuten	handakuten
[か] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) ka	[が] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) ga	[か゚] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) nga
[さ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) sa	[ざ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) za	None
[た] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) ta	[だ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) da	None
[は] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) ha	[ば] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) ba	[ぱ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) pa

Handakuten on ka, ki, ku, ke, ko (rendered as [か゚, き゚, く゚, け゚, こ゚] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help)) represent the sound of ng in singing ([ŋ]), which is an allophone of /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 novels who speak that way). This is called bidakuon (鼻濁音, "nasal muddy sound").

In katakana only, the dakuten may also be added to the character [ウ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) u and a small vowel character to create a [v] sound, as in ヴァ va. However, a hiragana version of this character also exists, with somewhat sporadic compatibility across platforms ([ゔ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help)). 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 [ビーナス] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) (bīnasu) instead of [ヴィーナス] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) (vīnasu). Many Japanese, however, would pronounce both the same, with a /b/ sound, or even /β/ much as in Spanish, and may or may not recognize them as representing the same sound.

An even less common method is to add dakuten to the w-series, reviving the mostly obsolete characters for /wi/ ([ヰ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help)) and /we/ ([ヱ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help)). /vu/ is represented by using /u/, as above; /wo/ becomes /vo/ despite its /w/ normally being silent. Precomposed characters exist for this method as well (/va/ [ヷ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) /vi/ [ヸ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) /vu/ [ヴ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) /ve/ [ヹ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) /vo/ [ヺ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help)), although most IMEs do not have a convenient way to enter them. Another rare application of dakuten is on the r-series, to mark them as explicitly l: [ラ゛] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) /la/, and so forth. This is only done in technical or pedantic contexts, as many Japanese cannot tell the difference between r and l.

In Ainu texts, handakuten can be used with the katakana [セ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) to make it a /ts/ sound, [セ゚] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) ce [tse] (which is interchangeable with [ツェ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help)), and is used with small fu to represent a final p, [ㇷ゚] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help). In addition, handakuten can be combined with either katakana [ツ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) or [ト] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) (tsu and to) to make a [tu̜] sound, [ツ゚] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) or [ト゚] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help).

In informal writing, dakuten is occasionally used on vowels to indicate a shocked or strangled articulation; for example, on [あ゛] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) or [う゛] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help). Dakuten can also be occasionally used with [ん (ん゛)] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help) to indicate a guttural hum, growl, or similar sound.

Kana iteration marks

The dakuten can also be added to hiragana and katakana iteration marks, indicating that the previous kana is repeated with voicing:

	none	dakuten
hiragana	[ゝ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help)	[ゞ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help)
katakana	[ヽ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help)	[ヾ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help)

Both signs are relatively rare, but can occasionally be found in personal names such as Misuzu ([みすゞ] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language code: jp (help)). In these cases the pronunciation is identical to writing the kana out in full. There is also a longer multi-character iteration mark called kunojiten, which is only used in vertical writing, and this also can have a dakuten added.

Other representations

Braille
Dakuten	Handakuten	Yōon + Dakuten	Yōon + Handakuten	Dakuten + Handakuten	Yōon + Dakuten + Handakuten

External links

• Media related to Dakuten at Wikimedia Commons