Dakuten and handakuten

The Template:Nihongo, colloquially Template:Nihongo3, is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a mora should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing).

The Template:Nihongo, colloquially Template:Nihongo3, is a diacritic used with kana for morae pronounced with Template:IPA or Template:IPA to indicate that they should instead be pronounced with Template:IPA.

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:

• Template:Unichar
• Template:Unichar
• Template:Unichar
• Template:Unichar
• Template:Unichar
• Template:Unichar

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, morae with dakuten are Template:Nihongo, while those without are Template:Nihongo. However, the handakuten (lit. "half-muddy mark") does not follow this pattern.

None	Dakuten	Handakuten
Template:Lang ka	Template:Lang ga	Template:Rarely
Template:Lang sa	Template:Lang za	Template:No
Template:Lang ta	Template:Lang da	Template:No
Template:Lang ha	Template:Lang ba	Template:Lang pa
Template:Lang ra	Template:No	Template:Rarely
Template:Lang wa	Template:Rarely	Template:No

(Yellow shading indicates non-standard use.)

Handakuten on ka, ki, ku, ke, ko (rendered as Template:Lang) represent the sound of ng in singing (Template:IPAblink), which is an allophone of Template:IPA 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 Template:Ill Template:Nihongo. Another rare application of handakuten is on the r-series, to mark them as explicitly l: Template:Lang Template:IPA, and so forth.<ref>Template:Citation</ref> 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 Template:Lang to represent Template:IPA in cases when speaker pronounces Template:Lang at the beginning of a word as a moraic nasal.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In katakana only, the dakuten may also be added to the character Template:Lang u and a small vowel character to create a Template:IPA sound, as in ヴァ va. However, a hiragana version of this character also exists, with somewhat sporadic compatibility across platforms (Template:Lang). As Template:IPA 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 Template:Lang (bīnasu) instead of Template:Lang (vīnasu). Japanese speakers, however, pronounce both the same, with Template:IPA or Template:IPA, an occasional allophone of intervocalic Template:IPA.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

An even less common method is to add dakuten to the w-series, reviving the mostly obsolete characters for Template:IPA (Template:Lang) and Template:IPA (Template:Lang). Template:IPA is represented by using /u/, as above; Template:IPA becomes Template:IPA despite its Template:IPA normally being silent. Precomposed characters exist for this method as well (Template:IPA Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Lang), although most IMEs do not have a convenient way to enter them.Template:Cn

In Ainu texts, handakuten can be used with the katakana Template:Lang to make it a /t͡s/ sound, Template:Lang ce [t͡se] (which is interchangeable with Template:Lang), and is used with small fu to represent a final p, Template:Lang. In addition, handakuten can be combined with either katakana Template:Lang or Template:Lang (tsu and to) to make a [tu̜] sound, Template:Lang or Template:Lang.Template:Cn

In Miyakoan, handakuten can be used with Template:Lang (normally [i]) to represent the vowel Template:IPA.Template:Cn

In informal writing, dakuten is occasionally used on vowels to indicate a shocked or strangled articulation; for example, on Template:Lang or Template:Lang. Dakuten can also be occasionally used with Template:Lang to indicate a guttural hum, growl, or similar sound.Template:Cn

Kana iteration marks

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	Template:Lang	Template:Lang
Katakana	Template:Lang	Template:Lang

Both signs are relatively rare, but can occasionally be found in personal names such as Misuzu (Template:Lang) 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 (Template:Nihongo2), only used in vertical writing, may also have a dakuten added (Template:Nihongo2).

Other communicative representations

• Representations of Dakuten

• Representations of Handakuten

Template:Asterisk Voiced morae and semi-voiced morae do not have independent names in radiotelephony and are signified by the unvoiced name followed by "ni dakuten" or "ni handakuten".

• Full Braille representation

Braille
Dakuten	Handakuten	Yōon + Dakuten	Yōon + Handakuten	Dakuten + Handakuten	Yōon + Dakuten + Handakuten
Template:Braille cell	Template:Braille cell	Template:Braille cell	Template:Braille cell	Template:Braille cell	Template:Braille cell

Origins

The kun'yomi pronunciation of the character Template:Nihongo2 (daku in on'yomi) is nigori; hence the dakuten may also be called the nigori-ten. This character, meaning "muddy", stems from historical Chinese phonology, where consonants were traditionally classified as "fully clear" (Template:Lang, voiceless unaspirated obstruent), "partly clear" (Template:Lang, voiceless aspirated obstruent), "fully muddy" (Template:Lang, voiced obstruent) and "partly muddy" (Template:Lang, voiced sonorant) (see Middle Chinese § Initials and w:zh:清濁音). Unlike in Chinese where "clear" and "muddy" were phonological, in Japanese, these terms are purely orthographic: a Template:Nihongo is simply a kana with a "muddy mark", or a dakuten; a Template:Nihongo<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=hirano-jiseion/> or Template:Nihongo is simply a kana with a "half muddy mark", or a handakuten; a Template:Nihongo is any other kana without either of these marks. In fact, the "partly clear/half muddy" consonant Template:IPA in Japanese would be considered "fully clear" in Chinese, while "clear" Japanese consonants such as Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA would be "partly muddy" in Chinese. Meiji-era descriptions of the Japanese "sound" system (either the actual phonology, or the orthography) in terms of "clear" and "muddy" always referenced the kana spelling and the two diacritics dakuten and handakuten.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=hirano-jiseion>Template:Cite book</ref> There is a distinction between Template:Nihongo<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> where a morpheme inherently contains a voiced consonant (as in the Sino-Japanese morpheme Template:Nihongo), and Template:Nihongo<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> where a morpheme loses its original voiceless consonant and gains a voiced counterpart through rendaku (as in Template:Nihongo → Template:Nihongo).

The earliest attested use of "muddy" diacritics was from the late ninth century. One of such diacritics was a superscript version of the radical Template:Lang from the "muddy" character Template:Lang, as in Template:Lang (ba rather than pa). The modern dakuten appears to have come from Chinese tone diacritics. In some documents, one dot marked pitch on a "clear sound," while two dots marked pitch on a "muddy sound." Another source was the Siddhaṃ nasality diacritic anusvāra through Buddhist sources. In Japanese writing, it was adapted into a dot placed at the top-right corner of a character to denote the "muddiness" or nasality of consonants, as well as of the nasalized vowels Template:IPAslink and Template:IPAslink adapted from the Chinese Template:IPAslink. The use of the anusvāra suggests prenasalization in early voiced consonants.Template:Sfnp

The handakuten is an innovation by Portuguese Jesuits, who first used it in the Rakuyōshū, to accurately transcribe the consonant Template:IPA and its lenited form Template:IPA, which had not been distinguished in domestic writing.Template:Sfnp

See also

• Tsu (kana)
• Sokuon
• Dagesh (Hebrew diacritic)

Bibliography

• Template:Cite book

External links

• Template:Commons category-inline
• Template:Ill and Template:Ill on Japanese Wikipedia
• Template:Lang (Trans.: Phonetic Kana with Dakuten) and Template:Lang (Trans.: Phonetic Kana with Handakuten)