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The dakuten (Japanese: 濁点, Japanese pronunciation: [dakɯ̥teꜜɴ] or [dakɯ̥teɴ], lit. "voicing mark"), colloquially ten-ten (点々, "dots"), 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 Japanese kana syllabaries indicate voiced consonants with marks known as dakuten. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) also has some featural elements, for example in the hooks and tails that are characteristic of implosives, ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ, and retroflex consonants, ʈ ɖ ʂ ʐ ɳ ɻ ɽ ɭ. The IPA diacritics are also featural.
Yōon and yōon-dakuten are also added to chi and shi to write ti, di and si, zi found in foreign borrowings; similarly gōyōon and gōyōon-dakuten are added to tsu to write tu, du. This differs from the system used in kana, where the base syllables are te and to respectively, and a subscript vowel i or u is added.
The dakuten forms ぢ, ヂ, are uncommon. They are primarily used for indicating a voiced consonant in the middle of a compound word (see rendaku ), and they don't usually begin a word. The dakuten form of the shi character is sometimes used when transliterating "di", as opposed to チ's dakuten form; for example, Aladdin is written as ...
The dakuten form of this character is used when transliterating "di" occasionally, as opposed to チ's dakuten form, or a de assigned to a small i; for example, Aladdin is written as アラジン Arajin, and radio is written as ラジオ. In the Ainu language, シ is used to represent the ʃi sound.
The dakuten's addition also changes the sound of the mora represented, to [ɡɯ] in initial positions and varying between [ŋɯ] and [ɣɯ] in the middle of words. A handakuten (゜) does not occur with ku in normal Japanese text, but it may be used by linguists to indicate a nasal pronunciation [ŋɯ] .
Both represent the sound [to], and when written with dakuten represent the sound [do]. In the Ainu language, the katakana ト can be written with a handakuten (which can be entered in a computer as either one character (ト゚) or two combined characters (ト゜) to represent the sound [tu], and is interchangeable with the katakana ツ゚.
Katakana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojūon kana without them. Characters shi シ , tsu ツ , so ソ , and n ン look very similar in print except for the slant and stroke shape. These differences in slant and shape are more prominent when written with an ink brush .