What does it mean when there's a little dash next to a hiragana/Katakana? Is it difference in… - Feed Post by Benkyo
What does it mean when there's a little dash next to a hiragana/Katakana? Is it difference in pronunciation or?
posted by Benkyo
Comments 6
Yes. Those words are called combination hiragana which are two separate kana combined into one to make one sound.
http://www.textfugu.com/season-1/japanese-pronunciation/3-10/
Do you mean the ten-ten mark, for example き ＞ ぎ. If so, then yes the sound changes. Ki > Gi. They are just as important as symbols without the tenten mark, so make sure to properly learn it.
k > g (ki > gi)
s > z (su > zu)
t > d (ta > da)
h > b (ha > ba)
This is the same for both Katakana and Hiragana. Although not all symbols can use a tenten, e.g the 'm' and 'n' columns don't (not in modern Japanese anyway. There are also a couple of other excepts e.g tsu > dzu, and chi/shi don't have them either.
also, the little dash used in Katakana elongates the sound. So a word like computer can be written in katakana コンピューター where the dashes represent double consonance. Here is the romanized form so you can see konpyuutaa (second u and a are represented in the dash).
No, This isn't what i mean! Sorry! I know what combination hiragana are, I know the ten-ten mark, and I know the elongating sound! I should have replied sooner. What I meant was i kept seeing a - next to a hiragana like -ひ or something like that. I wanted to know what that meant.
- We tried xD not sure about this though
i think when "-び" is written then that means this pronunciation is at the end of a word. for example 花火 (はなび）where 火 is read as び and is at the end of the word
so when you see "ほ-" that probably means this pronunciation is at the beginning of a word? for example 火照る（ほてる）where 火 is read as ほ and is at the beginning?
idk hope this helps ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
