dakuon

Dakuon, traditionally written 濁音, are the voiced consonants of Japanese phonology. They are produced with vocal cord voicing and are indicated in the kana writing system by the dakuten diacritic—two small strokes added to a kana character. The presence of dakuten changes the consonant's sound from voiceless to voiced, for example turning ka into ga or so into zo. The term dakuon refers specifically to these voiced sounds; their lighter counterparts produced with a circle, handakuten, form the p-sounds (pa, pi, pu, pe, po) rather than true dakuon.

In modern kana, dakuon are formed by adding dakuten to certain morae in the gojūon chart. The k-row becomes ga gi gu ge go; the s-row becomes za ji zu ze zo; the t-row becomes da di du de do. The h-row becomes ba bi bu be bo. The syllables ぢ and づ (dakuten forms of ち and つ) exist but are relatively rare in contemporary usage; many contexts preferred readings use じ and ず instead. The dakuon set thus comprises ga, gi, gu, ge, go; za, ji, zu, ze, zo; da, di, du, de, do; ba, bi, bu, be, bo.

Dakuon contrast with their unvoiced counterparts and with handakuten p-sounds. They are integral to standard orthography, pronunciation, and dictionary entries in Japanese. While the concept is widely taught in language learning and linguistics, actual usage of some dakuten forms (notably ぢ and づ) tends to be limited to specific words or historical spellings. See also Dakuten, Handakuten, Japanese phonology.