U+309A "゚" Combining Katakana-Hiragana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
゚
U+309A "゚" Combining Katakana-Hiragana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark is a combining diacritical mark used in the Japanese writing system to indicate that a syllable, typically beginning with an 'h' sound, should be pronounced with a semi-voiced or labialized sound, such as turning 'ha' into 'pa' when attached to a kana like は. Unlike the regular voiced sound mark (dakuten) which adds a voicing, this small circle diacritic (handakuten) specifically denotes a bilabial plosive or fricative, and it is combined with the base character in digital text to form a single grapheme that modifies the pronunciation of the kana it accompanies.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+309A |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Combining Katakana-Hiragana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark |
| Unicode 1.0 Name | Non-Spacing Katakana-Hiragana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark |
| Block | Hiragana |
| General Category | Nonspacing Mark |
| Canonical Combining Class | Kana Voicing |
| Bidirectional Class | Nonspacing Mark |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ゚ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ゚ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE3 0x82 0x9A |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x309A |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x0000309A |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u309a |