Dakuten - Phonetic Shifts

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), but the handakuten (lit. "half-muddy mark") does not follow this pattern.

Handakuten on ka, ki, ku, ke, ko (rendered as か゚, き゚, く゚, け゚, こ゚) represent the sound of ng in singing, 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 u and a small vowel character to create a 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 (bīnasu) instead of ヴィーナス (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) 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. Another rare application of dakuten is on the r-series, to mark them as explicitly l: ラ゛ /la/, and so forth. This is only done in technical or pedantic contexts, as most Japanese cannot tell the difference between r and l.

In Ainu language writing, handakuten can be used with the katakana セ to make it a /ts/ sound, セ゚ ce (which is interchangeable with チェ), and is used with small pu to represent a final p, ㇷ゚. In addition, handakuten can be combined with either katakana ツ or ト (tsu and to) to make a sound, ツ゚ or ト゚.