Japanese Hiragana with Diacritical Marks (Dakuten and Handakuten)

This Japanese for beginners video will teach you how to read and pronounce the Japanese Hiragana characters with diacritical marks. It includes pronunciation and romaji for each character so that you can practice and learn along! The diacritical marks are used to change the sound that certain characters make. Dakuten (ten-ten) is the diacritic mark that look like small lines or dots next to the characters. Handakuten (maru) is the diacritic mark that looks like a small circle next to the characters.

The dakuten can be used to turn k- Column characters into g- characters (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko become ga, gi, gu, ge, go), s- Column characters into z- characters (sa, *shi, su, se, so become za, *ji, zu, ze, zo), t- Column characters into d- characters (ta, *chi, *tsu, te, to become da, *ji, *zu, de, do), and h- Column characters into b- characters (ha, hi, fu, he, ho become ba, bi, bu, be, bo).

The handakuten can be used to turn h- Column characters into p- characters (ha, hi, fu, he, ho become pa, pi, pu, pe, po).

As you may have noticed, the h- Column characters can use both dakuten and handakuten to create different sounds.

Hiragana is one of the three writing systems in the Japanese language, along with Katakana and Kanji. It is the foundation to learning Japanese, and once you master this kana, you can move on to the second step, learning Katakana and vocabulary!

Pronunciation by VOICEVOX: Takehiro Kurono
Music used in this video is provided by copyright free platform StreamBeats by Harris Heller.

Useful Resources:
Duolingo is another great free tool for learning the kana, so I suggest you give the app a try as well!

Chapters:
0:00 intro
0:05 k- to g- Column
1:00 s- to z- Column
1:56 t- to d- Column
2:51 h- to b- Column
3:46 h- to p- Column

I hope that this video is helpful to you and that you continue to study Japanese with me!