Hiragana 6: "Tenten" + Double consonants

Introduction

How's the Hiragana studying going? Good? Bad? You've gone insane and need an infinite source of baby animal live streams to survive?

Oh, they're going well! That's so awesome to hear! Just keep going at it and you'll be able to read entire sentences before you know it! As for what's next...

Let’s Spice Things Up a Bit

You've been studying the 46 basic hiragana characters, and now it's time to learn their modified versions!

This lesson is going to teach you the rest of the sounds in the Japanese Language, but you don't have to memorize any new hiragana characters. Yep, that's right! We're just going to be adding a couple of symbols to the characters you already know

In English, we have a similar convention. For example, the word "fiancé". The small diagonal stroke on top of the e makes all the difference for this word. You immediately know that é is not the same as e, which helps guide you on how to properly sound out this letter.

Japanese has its own version of this and we're gonna learn all about it.

Introducing "tenten"

There are two different symbols you can put on a kana character:

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  The first one, which is two diagonal strokes and looks almost like a quotation mark ( ﾞ), is called dakuten.

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  The second, a small circle( ﾟ), is handakuten.

Together, you can refer to them as "tenten" and yes, the name comes from them both ending with "ten". Leave it up to the birthplace of Kawaii Culture to make such a cute name for them, right?

Dakuten ﾞ

Just as I mentioned before, adding tenten to a character will alter the sound it makes. Specifically, it alters the character’s consonant sound. So 「k, s, t, and h」 respectively turns into 「g, z, d, and b」.

You can see this better on the chart below.

Handakuten ﾟ

This one has the same principles as dakuten, but even simpler. It’s only used for the h column! This time, however, instead of turning h to b, you turn h into p. That's it! That's the only thing it does. I know, I love handakuten too.

And just like that, you know 25 more characters! 🎉

Next up, a new permutation of hiragana! But don't worry, you won't have to drill these, and there are no new characters to learn... just a small version of a familiar fellow.

Next, "Double Consonants"

Some Japanese words have doubled consonants that add stress, such as "happa" which sounds quite different than "hapa". We can form these double consonants by using the "small つ", which is a small version of the regular hiragana つ you already know and love.

Putting っ in between two hiragana doubles the consonant of the character that comes after it. When it's used like this, つ isn't pronounced.

For example, "hapa" is はぱ, and "happa" is はっぱ!

Here's what the difference sounds like:

Another example is "zasshi", which means magazine and is written as ざっし. Not ざし.

There is one consonant that gets doubled a bit differently though, namely: ん (n).

To double the n sound to make words such as annai ("guide") you write it as あんない. Just like in English, you add an extra n. For any other consonants that need doubling though, rely on our small, trusty friend っ.

I will now set you loose to practice your dakuten hiragana! After this, there is just one more hiragana lesson, and you're off to tackle katakana! Exceptional stuff, proud of you!

Summary

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  Dakuten and handakuten are called tenten: marks put on kana characters that alter the syllable's consonant.

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  Dakuten, which looks similar to a quotation mark, changes k, s, t, and h into g, z, d, and b, respectively.

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  Handakuten, a small circle, turns h into p.

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  To produce double consonants, you can use っ, the smaller version of つ tsu, to indicate that the following consonant is doubled. Example: happa is spelled as はっぱ.