Dakuten (濁点, Dakuten^?), colloquially ten-ten ("dot dot"), is a diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced. Handakuten (半濁点), colloquially maru ("circle"), is a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should instead be pronounced with [p]. The kun-yomi pronunciation of the character 濁 is nigori; hence the daku-ten may also be called the nigori-ten. The meaning of this character—muddy or turbid—is a hint that the theory behind this kind of spelling device originally came from China, where consonant sounds were traditionally described by terms such as clear, half-clear, muddy, and so on. A diacritical mark or diacritic, also called an accent mark, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Manyogana 万葉仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 For other meanings of Kana, see Kana (disambiguation). ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... The characters for Kanji, lit. ...

In informal writing, particularly manga, it is occasionally used on vowels to indicate a shocked or strangled articulation. Manga )   (pl. ...

The dakuten became standard practice in the Tokugawa era; previously, written Japanese did not distinguish between voiceless and voiced consonants. History of Japan Paleolithic Jomon Yayoi Yamato period ---Kofun period ---Asuka period Nara period Heian period Kamakura period Muromachi period Azuchi-Momoyama period ---Nanban period Edo period Meiji period Taisho period Showa period ---Japanese expansionism ---Occupied Japan ---Post-Occupation Japan Heisei The Edo period (江戸時代) is a...

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:

□゛ dakuten (U+3099)

□゜ handakuten (U+309A)

The dakuten glyph is drawn identically in both the hiragana and katakana scripts and so is the handakuten. 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 katakana, which does not provide any precomposed characters in order to fit within a single byte. Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji Hiragana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji; the Latin alphabet is also used in some cases. ... Katakana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... A character encoding or character set (sometimes referred to as code page) consists of a code that pairs a sequence of characters from a given set with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the storage of text in computers...

Quotes in written Japanese often use corner brackets (「」), so the similarity of dakuten and quotation marks (") isn't a problem. For the Wikipedia quotation template, see here. ... For the Wikipedia quotation template, see here. ...

Phonetic shifts

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

Handakuten on ka, ki, ku, ke, ko are not used in normal Japanese writing, but may be used by linguists and in dictionaries to represent the sound of ng in singing (IPA: [ŋ]), which is an allophone of /g/ in some dialects of Japanese. This is called bidakuon (鼻濁音), "nasal muddy sound". (See: Japanese phonology.) Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... This article deals with the phonology (i. ...

See hiragana for a complete table. Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji Hiragana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji; the Latin alphabet is also used in some cases. ...

Kana iteration marks

The dakuten can also be added to hiragana and katakana iteration marks, indicating that the previous kana is repeated with voicing: Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji Hiragana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji; the Latin alphabet is also used in some cases. ... Katakana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. ... Iteration marks (Jp. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Manyogana 万葉仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 For other meanings of Kana, see Kana (disambiguation). ...

Both signs are relatively rare, but can occasionally be found in personal names such as Misuzu (みすゞ). In these cases the pronunciation is identical to writing the kana out in full. There is also a longer multi-character repeat mark called kunojiten, which is only used in vertical writing, and this also can have a dakuten added. Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyōgana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji Hiragana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji; the Latin alphabet is also used in some cases. ... Katakana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. ... Iteration marks (Jp. ... Nihongo (meaning Japanese language), written vertically in kanji Yokogaki (横書き, horizontal writing) and tategaki (縦書き, vertical writing) are two systems of Japanese writing. ...

The V sound

In katakana only, the dakuten may also be added to the character ウ u and a small vowel character to create a /v/ sound, as in ヴァ va. 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 biinasu instead of ヴィーナス viinasu. Many Japanese, however, would pronounce both the same, with a /b/ sound, and may or may not recognize them as representing the same word. Katakana ) is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. ... Adjectives: Venusian or (rarely) Cytherean Atmosphere Surface pressure: 9. ...

An even less common method is to add dakuten to the w- series, reviving the now defunct characters for /wi/ (ヰ) and /we/ (ヱ). /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 /vi/ ヸ /vu/ ヴ /ve/ ヹ /vo/ ヺ), although most IMEs do not have a convenient way to enter them. An input method editor (IME) is a program or operating system component that allows computer users to enter complex characters and symbols (such as Japanese, Chinese, Tibetan and Korean characters), using a standard Western keyboard. ...

Mnemonic Devices

It's much easier for non-native speakers to remember the phonetic shift through the use of a mnemonic device starting with the original sound and ending with the changed sound. An example would be: Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: English mnemonics A mnemonic (pronounced in RP, [nɪmɑnɪk] in GA) is a memory aid, and most serve an educational purpose. ...

• Keg
• Soyuz
• Timid
• Hub
• Hop (especially helpful since both "o" and the handakuten are circles)

An alternate device can be used to remember which dakuten to use on the H-series to create the B- and P-series: the letter B, like the dakuten, has two components affixed to the vertical upright, whereas the letter P, like the half-dakuten, has one component.