日本語 Japanese Ask Questions Thread 3

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Japanese Ask Questions Thread2
http://dis.4chan.org/read/lang/1206158123/1-40

>955
It's called a dakuten.
It's a voicing marker. For characters that start with a plosive consonant, the consonant becomes voiced, and for everything else, a B is added. That's the gist. Rule of thumb: if there's a "soft" version of the consonant, that's usually what it turns into.
So か ka becomes が ga, た ta becomes だ da, etc; へ he becomes べ be and ほ ho becomes ぼ bo.

There are some complications, though; for example ふ fu with a dakuten ぶ is not vu but bu. If you know what voiceless plosive consonants are you'll probably be able to see the regularities, but otherwise I think you're better off just memorising which become "soft" versions and which get a B instead.

>>960
P.S.
Hang on, that's not entirely right. It's not just for plosive consonants. さ sa becomes ざ za, too. And that's the same kind of consonant as in ふ fu.

I guess it's just kind of irregular, then.
Well, then, I guess you just need to memorise the lot. You'll have to do so sooner or later anyway in order to become fluent.
Are you using Anki?