掲示板 Forums - Need help plsss

This will be terribly imprecise, but I'm trying to keep things simple: there's this process called sonorisation, or voicing, in which consonants get pronounced more "strongly" when they're next to certain other sounds, and become their "voiced" equivalents. Some vaguely similar examples in European languages are S becoming Z ("a house" - you hear an S, but "houses" - you hear a Z), F becoming V ("a wolf", but "two wolves") T becoming D, P becoming B and so on.

Japanese doesn't have quite the same equivalents, but the process is very similar. For example, you have "sei", 精 , which means "energy, vigour", but if you say 精精 (also written as 精々), which mean "at most, as much as possible", it becomes "seizei", not "seisei". Or you have "koto", 事, "thing", but when you encounter the same in 物事 (things in general), it's "monogoto", not "monokoto".

Since those pairs of sounds are "sisters", Japanese marks the "voiced" sister by simply adding the dakuten (the little sign like a quotation mark above) to the softer-sounding sister - さ (sa) becomes ざ (za), た (ta) becomes だ (da) and so on, instead of having a whole different symbol. There's also the handakuten (the little round, degree-like sign), but let's keep it simple for now. Also, sonorisation doesn't only happen in cases like the ones above, I was only trying to illustrate how these pairs of sounds are related.

ひ doesn't mean "hi", it's pronounced "hi." Or "hee", if you don't want to romanize it the standard way. び is pronounced "bi", or "bee." And there's also a third to this set: ぴ, or "pi."

In Japanese, consonant characters can have a mark called a 濁点 that changes the pronunciation. Here are other examples:

- た "ta"

- だ "da"

- か "ka"

- が "ga"

H characters are unique in Japanese for having two different possible marks. All others will either have one possible mark or none (ま, や, わ, ら, な, and vowels do not have other possible sounds).

I hope I didn't explain this in a confusing way!

All those explanations above seem detailed and great, but I'd just say don't ask too much questions about it as it is what it is. When I started learning I didn't bother wondering why some kana had ゛attached to them, I just treated them as seperate letters and it made my learning experience easier after. But ofc if you want to know the more detailed explanations it's very fine as well.