Dakuten, Handakuten & Combo Kana: Beyond the Basic 46

Every kana chart advertises 46 characters. Then you open a real Japanese menu and meet ば, ぱ, and ぎょ - none of which were on the poster. So how many hiragana are there, really?

The full answer: 46 basic characters, which grow to 104 per script once you add two small marks and one combining trick. The best news in this article is that almost none of the expansion requires new memorization - it's rules applied to shapes you already know. Here's the whole system.

Dakuten: two dots, twenty characters

The dakuten ( ゛) is a pair of short strokes at a character's top-right corner, and it means one thing: voice this sound. Say "k" and then "g" with a hand on your throat - the buzz you feel on "g" is voicing. Dakuten applies it across four rows:

か ka → が ga (and the rest of the K row → G)
さ sa → ざ za (S → Z)
た ta → だ da (T → D)
は ha → ば ba (H → B)

That's 20 "new" characters with zero new shapes. If you can read か, you can read が the moment you know the rule. Two quirks worth flagging: じ and ぢ are both pronounced "ji", and ず and づ are both "zu" - in modern Japanese じ and ず do nearly all the work.

Handakuten: one circle, five characters

The handakuten ( ゜) is a small circle, and it appears on exactly one row: H becomes P. は ha → ぱ pa, ひ hi → ぴ pi, and so on - five characters, one rule, done in minutes.

Combination kana: the small ゃ, ゅ, ょ

Combination characters (yōon) merge two kana into one syllable: take a character from the "i" column and attach a small や, ゆ, or よ. So き ki + small ゃ = きゃ, read as one beat: "kya", not "ki-ya". This gives Japanese sounds like しゅ (shu), ちょ (cho), and ぎょ (gyo) - 33 combinations in all, every one of them following that single rule.

The one genuine trap is size. きや (big や) is two syllables, "kiya"; きゃ (small ゃ) is one, "kya". Your eye needs a little deliberate practice to catch the difference - quiz it directly rather than assuming it'll come.

The small つ: not a new character, but a crucial trick

You'll also meet a small っ (sokuon). It isn't a new sound - it doubles the consonant that follows, adding a tiny catch in the word: きって (kitte, stamp) versus きて (kite, come). Like the small-ゃ trap, it's about noticing size, and it's everywhere in real Japanese.

So the real inventory is:

46 basic characters
+20 dakuten (voiced) characters
+5 handakuten (P-row) characters
+33 combination characters
= 104 per script - and katakana mirrors the entire system with the same marks and the same rules, so both scripts together still only cost you one set of rules. (That symmetry is part of why learning both scripts at once is more efficient than it sounds.)

When to learn them

Learn the basic 46 first - they're the load-bearing wall, and they're the part that needs mnemonics and real memorization work. Then the extended set falls quickly: dakuten and handakuten are a same-day win, and combinations click as soon as you know the い-column characters. Watch out for apps that stop at 46 - real Japanese uses the full set on every page, and the extended characters deserve quiz reps too, not just a footnote.

Kana Trail covers all 104 characters in both scripts - the voiced rows and combinations get taught with their rules, drilled in quizzes, and tracked in your progress just like the basic 46. Offline, no ads, no account, and all 104 kana are free forever. See the full chart in your browser, or start from the kana learning roadmap.