Sounds · 4 min
Voicing is not aspiration
か vs が is about whether your vocal cords buzz — not about how hard you push air. English speakers mix these up constantly.
The Japanese distinction is voicing
か and が differ by voicing: か is voiceless, が is voiced. Put a hand on your throat and hold "ga" — you feel the buzz.
English k and g are also a voicing pair, so this part is familiar. What is not familiar is that English k is strongly aspirated at the start of a word — the puff of air in "cat" — and Japanese か is not.
Hold a sheet of paper in front of your mouth and say "cat": the paper moves. Say か the Japanese way and it should barely move.
What this sounds like in practice
An aspirated か sounds overdone to a Japanese ear — closer to a stage whisper than to speech.
The reverse problem exists too. Japanese consonants between vowels are often lightly voiced, so the か in たなか lands somewhere between English k and g. This is why the same name shows up romanized as both Tanaka and, in older texts, Tanaga.
A practical fix: say the か row with less air than you think you need, and the が row while consciously feeling the buzz in your throat.
Where the marks go
| Plain | Dakuten ( ゛) | Handakuten ( ゜) |
|---|---|---|
| か row, k | が row, g | — |
| さ row, s | ざ row, z | — |
| た row, t | だ row, d | — |
| は row, h | ば row, b | ぱ row, p |
Only the は row splits two ways: two dots give ば (b), a small circle gives ぱ (p). h → b looks odd until you know that the は row used to be pronounced with p.
Four kana, two sounds
じ and ぢ are both "ji"; ず and づ are both "zu". The pronunciations are identical.
Which one to write is fixed by rule. じ and ず are the default. ぢ and づ appear in only two situations: when a kana repeats (つづく, to continue) and when compounding voices a ち or つ (はな + ち → はなぢ, nosebleed).
When these four come up in the writing practice here, the same-sounding alternative is accepted as correct.