An introduction to Japanese - Syntax, Grammar & Language

1.1. THE KANA 7

ba da za ga

bi dzi ji gi

bu dzu zu gu

be de ze ge

bo do zo go

A note about ’dzi’ and ’dzu’: while these are technically the correct
transcriptions for and , these syllables have been rendered obsolete in
current Japanese, with words that used to use now using , and words
that use now using. This will be explained in a bit more detail in the
section on pronunciation.

In addition to this regular voicing, the –column has a secondary
voicing, indicated with a small circle diacritic mark, called ’handakuten’

(
), which rather than producing a ’b’ sound, produces a ’p’ sound:

/ pa

/ pi

/ pu

/ pe

/ po

1.1.2 Writing the kana

Both hiragana and katakana may be relatively simple scripts, but they both
have specific ways of writing each syllable. The following tables show how
to write both hiragana and katakana the proper way. Note that these writ-
ten versions look different in places from printed forms.