ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Dakuten and Handakuten

Okay, so imagine you are writing the letter "h" in Japanese. It looks like this: は. Now, what if you want to change the sound it makes from "ha" to "ba"? Well, that's where dakuten comes in.

Dakuten is like a little "mark" that you put on top of certain letters in Japanese to change the sound they make. It looks kind of like two little dots or lines and it means you should add a little "voiced" sound to the letter.

So if we put dakuten on the letter "ha" like this: ば, now it makes the "ba" sound instead!

But what about when we want to change the sound of a different letter? That's where handakuten comes in.

Handakuten is also a little mark, but this one looks like a small circle instead of dots or lines. You put it on top of certain letters in Japanese to change the sound they make.

For example, imagine we want to change the "h" sound in the word "hi" to a "p" sound. We can do that by putting handakuten on top of the "hi" like this: ぴ. Now it makes the "pi" sound instead!

So, to sum up: dakuten is a little "mark" that you put on top of certain letters in Japanese to make them sound a little different, and handakuten is a different little "mark" that you put on top of other letters to change their sound.
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