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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 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 アラジン Arajin, and radio is written as ラジオ. It is, however, more common to use ディ instead, such as ディオン to translate the name Dion.
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.
A dakuten may be added to this character; this changes it to げ in hiragana, ゲ in katakana, ge in Hepburn romanization and the pronunciation shifts to [ɡe] in initial positions and varying between [ŋe] and [ɣe] in the middle of words.
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] .
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.
All combinations of hiragana with dakuten and handakuten used in modern Japanese are available as precomposed characters (including the rare ゔ vu), and can also be produced by using a base hiragana followed by the combining dakuten and handakuten characters (U+3099 and U+309A, respectively). This method is used to add the diacritics to kana ...
translit. with dakuten: gi: translit. with handakuten (ngi) hiragana origin: 幾: katakana origin: 幾: Man'yōgana: 支 伎 岐 企 棄 寸 吉 杵 來 貴 紀 記 奇 寄 忌 幾 木 城: Voiced Man'yōgana: 伎 祇 芸 岐 儀 蟻 疑 宜 義 擬: spelling kana: 切手のキ (Kitte no "ki")