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Phonetic markers

Voiced marker daku ten’ (voiced point) or simply ten ten’ (dot dot) is common in hiragana and katakana to indicate a voiced sound. This mark changes the following kana columns in both hiragana and katakana:

か or ‘ka’ becomes が or ‘ga’

さ or  ‘sa’ becomes  ざ or ‘za’

た or  ‘ta’ becomes  だ or ‘da’

は or  ’ha’ becomes  ば or ‘ba’

Known colloquially as ‘maru’ (circle), or more formally as ‘han daku ten’ (half-voiced point). This is used to indicate a change in voicing from an ‘h’ to ‘p’ in the ‘ha’ kana column only. 

I.e. は ‘ha’ becomes ぱ ‘pa’.

っ,ッ

A ‘glottal stop’ is a sound produced by a momentary complete closure of the glottis, followed by a sudden release; for example ‘oh oh’. Small tsu っ (hiragana) or ッ (katakana) behaves as a glottal stop; so it effectively doubles the sound of the next consonant, e.g. だった (‘datta’ in Romaji).  This common little っ takes anything up to one mora, depending on how much emphasis is used. This is also sometimes called the ‘double consonant marker’, although another glyph ん ’n’ is used in the case of な’na’ or ま‘ma’ kana column syllables.

You will notice a special gaigana symbol where っ or ッ arise which partly resembles the glottal stop as represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet. This helps preserve co linearity between our transliteration and the original kana. In normal Romaji, a double consonant is substituted, so っ could represent any number of ‘letters’. 

The cho’uon (long sound) is used predominantly in katakana to indicate a lengthened vowel sound.   While っ precedes the glyph it accents, ー follows the vowel  it  lengthens (remember this ー is drawn upright in vertical text).

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