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So ga and ka are a voiced / unvoiced pair, as are gi and ki, gu and ku, and so on. The same holds true for za and sa, zu and su, da and ta, etc. It kind of breaks down a bit when you get to ji and shi, which aren't really a true phonetic pair. Ditto ji and chi, and also zu and tsu. But this is, nevertheless, how the Japanese alphabet works. Sorry. Notice also the two blank spaces in the middle of the table, where you
might have been expecting a Notice also that adding two strokes to ha / hi / fu / he / ho gives us ba / bi / bu / be / bo , even though ba isn't really a voiced form of ha - but, again, that's how it's written in Japanese. Notice that we also get pa / pi / pu / pe / po formed from ha / hi / fu / he / ho by the addition of a small circle rather than two dashes. |