Hiragana: Dakuten and Combinations

Now that you know all 46 basic hiragana, this lesson teaches you how to expand the system with dakuten (゛), handakuten (゜), combination characters, long vowels, and the small っ (tsu). These additions roughly double the number of sounds available.

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Dakuten (゛) — Voiced Consonants

The dakuten (濁点) is a pair of small diagonal strokes (゛) added to the top-right of certain characters to "voice" the consonant:

G Row (が行) — from K Row

Character	Romaji	Base	Example Word
が	ga	か → が	がっこう (gakkou) — school
ぎ	gi	き → ぎ	おにぎり (onigiri) — rice ball
ぐ	gu	く → ぐ	ぐうぜん (guuzen) — coincidence
げ	ge	け → げ	げんき (genki) — energetic / well
ご	go	こ → ご	ごはん (gohan) — rice / meal

Z Row (ざ行) — from S Row