U+309C "゜" Katakana-Hiragana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark Unicode Character
U+309C "゜" Katakana-Hiragana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark is a diacritical mark used in the Japanese writing system, specifically to transform certain kana characters into their semi-voiced counterparts. It appears as a small circle placed above the top right of a kana character, such as turning "ハ" (ha) into "パ" (pa), indicating a shift from an unvoiced consonant to a plosive bilabial sound. This mark is applied to the hiragana and katakana of the H line (ha, hi, fu, he, ho) and the P line in modern usage, and it plays an essential role in accurately representing both native Japanese words and foreign loanwords. Unlike the tenten, which indicates a voiced sound, this semi-voiced mark specifically denotes a change to a "p" sound, making it a distinct and vital component of the Japanese syllabary.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+309C |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Katakana-Hiragana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark |
| Block | Hiragana |
| General Category | Modifier Symbol |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Other Neutral |
| Decomposition Type | Compat |
| Decomposition Mapping | "SP" U+0020 Space "゚" U+309A Combining Katakana-Hiragana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ゜ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ゜ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE3 0x82 0x9C |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x309C |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x0000309C |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u309c |