Dakuon, Handakuon and Yōon: How They Relate to the Basic Kana
Hiroki Obara · DeveloperStudyX Japanese Letters TableHow-To
The current standard for writing kana is Gendai Kanazukai, “Modern Kana Usage,” a Cabinet notice issued in 1986 (Agency for Cultural Affairs, in Japanese). Its main text sorts the sounds of Japanese into five groups: chokuon (plain syllables), yōon (contracted sounds), hatsuon (ん), sokuon (small っ) and chōon (long vowels), and shows how to write each. Dakuon and handakuon belong to the first group, the plain syllables.
Many learners have met these words, but the relationship between seion, dakuon, handakuon and yōon is surprisingly hard to explain cleanly. This article lays out the four with counts and tables.
Seion: kana without marks
Kana that carry neither the dakuten ゛ nor the handakuten ゜ are called seion, “clear sounds.” They are the kana in what we usually call the gojūon chart. The rows from あ to わ hold 45 kana, and adding ん makes 46. ん is sometimes treated separately as hatsuon.
In this article, seion is the base. Dakuon, handakuon and yōon are all seion with something added.
Dakuon: 20 kana with ゛
Dakuon, “voiced sounds,” are seion with the dakuten ゛ at the upper right. Only four rows take it: か, さ, た and は.
| Seion | Dakuon |
|---|---|
| か き く け こ | が ぎ ぐ げ ご |
| さ し す せ そ | ざ じ ず ぜ ぞ |
| た ち つ て と | だ ぢ づ で ど |
| は ひ ふ へ ほ | ば び ぶ べ ぼ |
Four rows of five gives 20. In standard modern pronunciation, ぢ and づ sound the same as じ and ず (ji and zu). There are rules for which to write, but the sounds themselves are not distinguished.
Handakuon: 5 kana with ゜
Handakuon, “half-voiced sounds,” are seion with the handakuten ゜ at the upper right. Only the は row takes it.
| Seion | Handakuon |
|---|---|
| は ひ ふ へ ほ | ぱ ぴ ぷ ぺ ぽ |
The は row is the only row with two possible marks: ゛ turns it into ば (ba), and ゜ turns it into ぱ (pa).
Yōon: adding small ゃ, ゅ, ょ
Yōon, “contracted sounds,” are written by adding a small ゃ, ゅ or ょ after a kana from the i column, and are read as a single sound. きゃ (kya) is one sound, not き plus や. Modern Kana Usage says the や, ゆ and よ used in yōon should “as far as possible be written small.” The size matters: きやく (kiyaku, “terms”) and きゃく (kyaku, “guest”) are different words.
These i-column kana can form yōon:
| Base kana | Yōon |
|---|---|
| き | きゃ きゅ きょ |
| し | しゃ しゅ しょ |
| ち | ちゃ ちゅ ちょ |
| に | にゃ にゅ にょ |
| ひ | ひゃ ひゅ ひょ |
| み | みゃ みゅ みょ |
| り | りゃ りゅ りょ |
| ぎ | ぎゃ ぎゅ ぎょ |
| じ | じゃ じゅ じょ |
| ぢ | ぢゃ ぢゅ ぢょ |
| び | びゃ びゅ びょ |
| ぴ | ぴゃ ぴゅ ぴょ |
Seven seion times three gives 21, four dakuon times three gives 12, and one handakuon times three gives 3, for 36 yōon in all. ぢゃ, ぢゅ and ぢょ almost never appear in actual words.
Yōon stack with the other marks. き plus ゛ is ぎ, and ぎ plus ゃ is ぎゃ. If you think of it as adding one mark at a time, there is no need to memorize 36 separate items.
Sokuon, hatsuon and chōon are different
The small っ (sokuon), ん (hatsuon), and long vowels (chōon), such as the かあ in おかあさん, are a different kind of thing from seion with a mark added.
Japan’s national curriculum for elementary schools (Ministry of Education, in Japanese) includes writing “long vowels, yōon, sokuon, hatsuon and so on” in the content for Japanese language in grades 1 and 2. Children in Japan learn how to write small kana and long vowels at school, alongside hiragana itself.
An order for learning
I think the best order is seion, then dakuon, then handakuon, then yōon. Each later group is an earlier one with something added.
Move to dakuon once the seion are mostly secure. If か is not yet familiar, the meaning of the mark on が is lost. Once the か row is solid, saying “the ゛ mark makes your throat buzz” brings in all five kana of the が row at once.
Learn handakuon together with the は row. Saying は, ば and ぱ side by side makes it easy to hear how each mark changes the sound.
For yōon, start by saying two kana quickly. Say き and や separately, then close the gap until it becomes きゃ. Show a large や next to a small ゃ, and explain that the small one sticks to the kana before it to make one sound.
At every stage, I think finding kana inside familiar words sticks better than working from the chart alone. Yōon turn up everywhere: じゃがいも (potato), ぎゅうにゅう (milk), ちょうちょ (butterfly).
StudyX Japanese Letters Table
StudyX Japanese Letters Table is a kana chart app where every cell plays its sound. The ゛, ゜ and ゃ buttons at the bottom of the screen switch the whole chart to dakuon, handakuon or yōon. You pick either ゛ or ゜, and pressing it again turns it off. ゃ combines with ゛ or ゜, so ゛ plus ゃ gives a chart of ぎゃ, じゃ, びゃ and so on. In the yōon chart, the cells in the a, u and o columns change to yōon, while the i and e columns keep their original kana. The ぢゃ, ぢゅ and ぢょ from the table above appear too.
In the developer interview, asked why the chart switches with buttons instead of showing everything in one large table, I said: “I wanted it to work on iPhone as well as iPad. Screen size led to the current design.” The result is a chart where adding one mark to the seion changes the whole table.
Tap a kana and you hear it. There is a recording for each kana: 46 seion, 20 dakuon, 5 handakuon and 36 yōon. The mark buttons work in every display mode: hiragana, katakana, and uppercase or lowercase romaji.
In the listening game, ききとりあそび, the app plays a word one sound at a time and you tap the kana in the order you heard them. When the next kana is a dakuon or yōon, the chart switches to that table automatically. ぢ and じ, and づ and ず, count as the same answer. In the interview I described this help this way: “I always want to design the experience so the child can discover something on their own.”
The small っ and the long-vowel mark ー are not on the chart, so the game leaves out words that contain them. In the interview I said: “Because you can’t answer them from the chart. Parents and others can fill that gap by talking with the child.” For sokuon and long vowels, a good start is saying words slowly, sound by sound, at home.
The app runs in landscape on both iPhone and iPad. It is a one-time purchase with no ads and no in-app purchases. The on-screen labels are in Japanese. For how the chart is organized, see How to Memorize the Kana Chart: Learn the Rows and Columns. For a first session, see Getting Started with StudyX Japanese Letters Table.
