The H row and the two little marks that double your kana

Yesterday you learned the な row and how to type ん — nn before a vowel or at the end, one n before other consonants. Today we finish the basic kana set with the は row, then flip on the two little marks that give you four new rows for almost no extra work.

The は row

Five characters. Romaji first, then the kana.

• ha → は
• hi → ひ
• fu → ふ
• he → へ
• ho → ほ

Two things to watch. First, ふ is typed fu, not hu. Second, へ is the same character as the particle へ（e）meaning "to" — same shape, different job. You type it the same way either time.

So: はな（hana, flower）, ひと（hito, person）, ふね（fune, boat）, へや（heya, room）, ほん（hon, book）. Type those five until your fingers stop checking.

The two little marks

Here is the trick that doubles your range. Take a kana from the k, s, t or h row and add two small strokes at the top right — called だくてん（dakuten）or てんてん（tenten）. The sound becomes voiced.

• か ka → が ga
• さ sa → ざ za
• た ta → だ da
• は ha → ば ba

A small circle instead — はんだくてん（handakuten）, the little まる — gives you the p sounds:

• は ha → ぱ pa

Only the は row takes the circle. か, さ and た do not.

How you actually type them

You do not type a special key for the marks. You type the romaji of the voiced sound directly.

• が is ga, not ka plus something
• ざ is za
• だ is da
• ば is ba
• ぱ is pa

That is the whole rule. If you can type ka, you can type ga.

Three words to prove it

かばん（kaban, bag）. You need か, then ば — ka then ba. Two rows, one word.

でんわ（denwa, telephone）. で is て with dakuten, typed de. Then ん — and remember from yesterday, n before a consonant is a single n. Then わ. So denwa.

ぼうし（boushi, hat）. ぼ is ほ with dakuten, typed bo. Then う, then し. Note the long お sound is written おう here, and you type the う: bo + u + shi.

A small warning about ぢ and づ

There are two more dakuten kana: ぢ（ji）and づ（zu）. They exist, and you will meet them in a few words, but in modern Japanese じ and ず do almost all the work. Type ji and zu and you will be right nearly every time. We will come back to the exceptions when they matter.

Drill

Type each line five times without looking at a chart.

は ひ ふ へ ほ ば び ぶ べ ぼ ぱ ぴ ぷ ぺ ぽ かばん　でんわ　ぼうし

If you are on a phone, the same logic holds — the dakuten keys sit on the same panel as the plain kana, usually a small ゛button you tap after the character. The romaji route on a laptop is faster for now.

Where this leaves you

You now have every basic kana row except ま and や, and you can voice four of the rows you already knew. That covers a surprising amount of real text. The next gap is combinations — the small ゃゅょ that glue two kana into one sound. That is where きょう and しゃしん live, and it is the last piece before you can type almost anything you can say.