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Thedakuten (Japanese:濁点;Japanese pronunciation:[da.kɯ̥.te(ꜜ)ɴ],lit. 'muddying/voicing mark'), colloquiallyten-ten (点々, "dots"), is adiacritic most often used in theJapanesekana syllabaries to indicate that theconsonant of amora should be pronouncedvoiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergonerendaku (sequential voicing).

Thehandakuten (半濁点;[han.daꜜ.kɯ̥.teɴ],lit. 'semi-muddying/voicing mark'), colloquiallymaru (丸, "circle"), is a diacritic used with kana for morae pronounced with/h/ or/f/ to indicate that they should instead be pronounced with/p/.

Thedakuten resembles a quotation mark, while thehandakuten is a small circle, similar to a degree sign, both placed at the top right corner of a kana character:

• U+3099 ◌゙COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA VOICED SOUND MARK
• U+309A ◌゚COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK
• U+309B ゛KATAKANA-HIRAGANA VOICED SOUND MARK
• U+309C ゜KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK
• U+FF9E ﾞHALFWIDTH KATAKANA VOICED SOUND MARK
• U+FF9F ﾟHALFWIDTH KATAKANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK

Both thedakuten andhandakuten glyphs are drawn identically inhiragana andkatakana scripts. Thecombining characters are rarely used in full-width Japanese characters, asUnicode and all common multibyte Japaneseencodings provide precomposed glyphs for all possibledakuten andhandakuten character combinations in the standard hiragana and katakana ranges. However, combining characters are required inhalf-width kana, which does not provide any precomposed characters in order to fit within a single byte.

The similarity between thedakuten andquotation marks (") is not a problem, as written Japanese usescorner brackets (「」).

The following table summarizes thephonetic shifts indicated by thedakuten andhandakuten. Literally, morae withdakuten are "muddy sounds" (濁音,dakuon), while those without are "clear sounds" (清音,seion). However, thehandakuten (lit. "half-muddy mark") does not follow this pattern.

(Yellow shading indicates non-standard use.)

Handakuten onka,ki,ku,ke,ko (rendered asか゚, き゚, く゚, け゚, こ゚) represent the sound ofng insinging ([ŋ]), which is anallophone 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 fiction who speak that way). This is calledbidakuon [ja](鼻濁音; "nasal muddy sound"). Another rare application ofhandakuten is on ther-series, to mark them as explicitlyl:ラ゚/la/, and so forth.^[1] This is only done in technical or pedantic contexts, as many Japanese speakerscannot tell the difference betweenr andl. Additionally, linguists sometimes useウ゚ to represent/ɴ/ in cases when speaker pronouncesう at the beginning of a word as a moraic nasal.^[2]

In katakana only, thedakuten may also be added to the characterウu and a small vowel character to create a[v] sound, as in ヴァva. However, a hiragana version of this character also exists, with somewhat sporadic compatibility across platforms (ゔ). 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). Japanese speakers, however, pronounce both the same, with[b] or[β], an occasional allophone of intervocalic/b/.^[3]

An even less common method is to adddakuten to thew-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 mostIMEs do not have a convenient way to enter them.^{[citation needed]}

InAinu texts, handakuten can be used with the katakanaセ to make it a /t͡s/ sound,セ゚ce [t͡se] (which is interchangeable withツェ), and is used with smallfu to represent a finalp,ㇷ゚. In addition, handakuten can be combined with either katakanaツ orト (tsu andto) to make a [tu̜] sound,ツ゚ orト゚.^{[citation needed]}

InMiyakoan, handakuten can be used withイ (normally [i]) to represent the vowel[ɨ].^{[citation needed]}

In informal writing,dakuten is occasionally used on vowels to indicate a shocked or strangled articulation; for example, onあ゙ orゔ.Dakuten can also be occasionally used withん (ん゙) to indicate a guttural hum, growl, or similar sound.^{[citation needed]}

Thedakuten can also be added to hiragana and katakanaiteration marks, indicating that the previous kana is repeated with voicing:

Both signs are relatively rare, but can occasionally be found in personal names such asMisuzu (みすゞ) or brand names such asIsuzu (いすゞ). In these cases the pronunciation is identical to writing the kana out in full. A longer, multi-character iteration mark called thekunojiten (〱), only used invertical writing, may also have adakuten added (〲).

• Representations of Dakuten

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
に濁点 ni "Dakuten"*	▄ ▄ ⓘ

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-5 Japanese Braille

• Representations of Handakuten

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
に半濁点 ni "Handakuten"*	▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ⓘ

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-6 Japanese Braille

* 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

Thekun'yomi pronunciation of the character濁 (daku inon'yomi) isnigori; hence thedakuten may also be called thenigori-ten. This character, meaning "muddy", stems fromhistorical Chinese phonology, where consonants were traditionally classified as "fully clear" (全清, voicelessunaspiratedobstruent), "partly clear" (次清, voicelessaspirated obstruent), "fully muddy" (全濁, voiced obstruent) and "partly muddy" (次濁, voicedsonorant) (seeMiddle Chinese § Initials andw:zh:清濁音). Unlike in Chinese where "clear" and "muddy" were phonological, in Japanese, these terms are purely orthographic: a "muddy sound" (濁音,dakuon) is simply a kana with a "muddy mark", or adakuten; a "partly clear" (次清音,jiseion)^[4][5][6][7] or "half muddy sound" (半濁音,handakuon) is simply a kana with a "half muddy mark", or ahandakuten; a "clear sound" (清音,seion) is any other kana without either of these marks. In fact, the "partly clear/half muddy" consonant/p/ in Japanese would be considered "fully clear" in Chinese, while "clear" Japanese consonants such as/m/,/n/,/ɾ/,/j/ and/w/ would be "partly muddy" in Chinese.Meiji-era descriptions of the Japanese "sound" system (either the actualphonology, or theorthography) in terms of "clear" and "muddy" always referenced the kana spelling and the two diacriticsdakuten andhandakuten.^{[8][9][10][7]} There is a distinction between "base muddiness" (本濁,hondaku)^[11] where amorpheme inherently contains a voiced consonant (as in theSino-Japanese morphemega (我)), and "new muddiness" (新濁,shindaku)^[12] where a morpheme loses its original voiceless consonant and gains a voiced counterpart throughrendaku (as inkao (顔) →asagao (朝顔)).

The earliest attested use of "muddy"diacritics was from the late ninth century. One of such diacritics was asuperscript version of theradical氵 from the "muddy" character濁, as in婆^氵 (ba rather thanpa). The moderndakuten appears to have come from Chinese tone diacritics. In some documents, one dot markedpitch on a "clear sound," while two dots marked pitch on a "muddy sound." Another source was theSiddhaṃ nasality diacriticanusvāra throughBuddhist 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 thenasalized vowels/ĩ/ and /ũ/ adapted from the Chinese/ŋ/. The use of the anusvāra suggestsprenasalization in early voiced consonants.^[13]

Thehandakuten is an innovation by PortugueseJesuits, who first used it in theRakuyōshū, to accuratelytranscribe theconsonant/p/ and itslenited form/f/, which had not been distinguished in domestic writing.^[14]

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

• Frellesvig, Bjarke (2010).A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-0-521-65320-6.

• Media related toDakuten at Wikimedia Commons
• Dakuten [ja] andHandakuten [ja] onJapanese Wikipedia
• 濁点付き発音仮名 (Trans.:Phonetic Kana with Dakuten) and半濁点付き発音仮名 (Trans.:Phonetic Kana with Handakuten)

• Kana
• Japanese phonology
• Japanese writing system terms
• Diacritics

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