Two Dots, One Circle: Reading が ざ だ ば ぱ in a Balloon Game

Yesterday you finished the hiragana chart with わ, を and ん, and you learned that を and は change sound when they act as particles. Today we add two small marks that double the size of your kana set without adding a single new shape.

The two marks

Look at these pairs:

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

The mark on the right is called 濁点（だくてん）— two short strokes at the top right of the character. It voices the consonant: k becomes g, s becomes z, t becomes d, h becomes b.

There is a second mark, a small circle, called 半濁点（はんだくてん）. It only attaches to the h-row:

• は（ha）→ ぱ（pa）

So は has three forms: は, ば, ぱ. Ha, ba, pa. If you can see the difference between two dots and one circle, you can read all three.

Where it gets interesting

Some pairs are common words on their own. か (ka) can mean 蚊（か）— a mosquito. が (ga) is usually a subject particle. さ (sa) is a particle too. ざ (za) is rare alone but appears in ざっし（zasshi）— a magazine.

Here are words you can already read with today's marks:

• かばん（kaban）— bag
• かぎ（kagi）— key
• だいがく（daigaku）— university
• まど（mado）— window
• えび（ebi）— shrimp
• ぶた（buta）— pig
• ぱん（pan）— bread
• てんぷら（tenpura）— tempura

Notice だいがく: two dakuten, one word. And てんぷら has a handakuten in the middle. These marks are not decoration. They are the difference between かばん (bag) and かはん (not a word).

The balloon game

Here is the game. Imagine balloons floating up. Each balloon has one kana on it: either the plain form or the marked form. You have a pin. You pop only the balloons that match the sound you hear in your head.

Start with pairs. Write か and が on two slips of paper. Mix them. Look at one. Say the sound out loud. Do this ten times. Then switch to さ and ざ. Then た and だ. Then は, ば, ぱ.

The goal is not speed. The goal is that your eye stops seeing "か with something on top" and starts seeing が as its own character. That shift takes a few days, not a few minutes.

If you want a physical version, draw twenty balloons on a page, fill them with random kana from today's set, and pop (cross out) only the voiced ones. The next day, pop only the unvoiced ones. The constraint forces your eye to sort them.

A note on ぢ and づ

You may see ぢ（ji）and づ（zu）in the chart. They exist, but they are rare in modern Japanese. ち and つ with dakuten make the same sounds as じ and ず in most words. For now, treat them as footnotes. If you see them in a word like ちぢむ（chijimu）— to shrink — you will recognise them. Otherwise, do not worry.

What your eye is learning

The dakuten sits in the top right corner. The handakuten is a small circle in the same place. Your brain will try to read the base character first: "that's は." Then it will notice the mark and correct itself. That correction is the skill. Every time you make it, the gap between seeing and knowing gets shorter.

By the end of today, you should be able to look at が, ざ, だ, ば, ぱ and read them without translating from the unmarked form. That is the whole game.

Tomorrow you meet katakana for the first time. Same sounds, different shapes — and a café menu in your city or anywhere else becomes readable.