Japanese Classroom

[Shreevatsa]

私日本語分かります。

[CanadianCrafter]

I have a quick question. 

ごめんなさい

is sorry right? but when I used a hiragana chart I noticed that there is no "go" but ko which is こ. I notice that a lot of the time there are markings like quotation markings at the side. What is this called and are there more symbols like it? I'm assuming that it alters the sound and perhaps meaning of the 48 hiragana characters. Would this also mean that the 48 are base characters with these symbols added onto them? Thanks.

[Alpha the Errorist]

On 7/24/2018 at 1:00 AM, CanadianCrafter said:

I have a quick question. 

ごめんなさい

is sorry right? but when I used a hiragana chart I noticed that there is no "go" but ko which is こ. I notice that a lot of the time there are markings like quotation markings at the side. What is this called and are there more symbols like it? I'm assuming that it alters the sound and perhaps meaning of the 48 hiragana characters. Would this also mean that the 48 are base characters with these symbols added onto them? Thanks.

Kinda late, but allow me to explain.

Yes, ごめんなさい means sorry. The quotation marks you're talking about are called "dakuten", and it's only used on a few of the hiragana and katakana characters.

They're used for the k-line, s-line, t-line and h-line. So that means:

k-line: かきくけこ (ka ki ku ke ko) becomes がぎぐげご (ga gi gu ge go)

s-line: さしすせそ (sa shi su se so) becomes ざじずぜぞ (za ji zu ze zo)

t-line: たちつてと (ta chi tsu te to) becomes だぢづでど (da ji zu de do)

h-line: はひふへほ (ha hi hu he ho) becomes ばびぶべぼ (ba bi bu be bo)

 

Similarly, there is also "handukaten" but it's only used on the h-line. In that case, はひふへほ just becomes ぱぴぷぺぽ (pa pi pu pe po)

All of this is just for the sake of creating a larger variety of consonant sounds in Japanese characters and they're used in the same way for katakana characters. In fact, some hiragana and katakana charts do have dakuten and handakuten characters as well.

 

[nancy elhayatmy]

why are there two "zu"s in both of the (s) and (t) lines , do they have different uses ?