Iteration mark
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Iteration marks (Jp. 踊り字 odoriji "dancing mark" , 重ね字 kasaneji, 繰り返し記号 kurikaeshikigō, or 反復記号 hanpukukigō, "repetition symbols") are used in Japanese to represent a duplicated character. For example, hitobito, "people" is usually written 人々, using the kanji for 人 with a repetition mark, 々, rather than 人人, using the same kanji twice.
Japanese has three different iteration marks for its three writing systems, namely kanji (々), hiragana (ゝ), and katakana (ヽ).
In Chinese, a similar mark is used in fast writing to represent a doubled character, but it is never used in careful writing or printed matter, while in Japanese using the kanji iteration mark is usually the preferred form.
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Kanji
While Japanese does not have a grammatical plural form per se, some kanji can be reduplicated to indicate plurality. This differs for Chinese, which normally only repeats multiple characters for the purposes of adding emphasis, although there are some exceptions (eg. 人 ren person, 人人 renren everybody).
- 人 hito — person; 人々 hitobito — people
- 山 yama — mountain; 山々 yamayama — many mountains
However, for some words duplication may alter the meaning:
- 個 ko — piece, object; 個々 koko — piece by piece, individually
- 時 toki — time; 時々 tokidoki — sometimes
- 翌日 yokujitsu — next day; 翌々日 yokuyokujitsu — "next next day" (two days later)
The repetition mark is not used in every case where two identical characters appear side by side, but only where the repetition itself is etymologically significant. Where a character ends up appearing twice as part of a compound, it is usually written out in full:
- 民主主義 minshu-shugi — "democracy" (the abbreviated 民主々義 is only occasionally seen)
The kanji repetition symbol is sometimes called noma because it looks like katakana no and ma. This symbol originates from a simplified form of the character 仝, a variant of 同 written in the Grass Script style. See Taishukan Kanji Q&A Q2003.
Kana
Kana uses different iteration marks, one for hiragana, ゝ, and one for katakana, ヽ. The hiragana iteration mark is seen in some personal names like さゝ川 Sasakawa or おゝ杉 Ōno, and it forms part of the formal name of the car company Template:Nihongo. The kana iteration marks can be combined with the dakuten voicing mark to indicate that the repeated syllable should be voiced, for example みすゞ Misuzu. If the first syllable is already voiced, for example じじ jiji, the voiced repetition mark still needs to be used: じゞ rather than じゝ, which would be read as jishi.
While widespread in old Japanese texts, the kana iteration marks are generally not used in modern Japanese, except for some special uses such as in the aforementioned names, though it may appear in informal handwritten texts.
Repeating multiple characters
In addition to the single-character iteration marks, there are also two-character repeat marks. They are used in vertical writing only, and they are effectively obsolete in modern Japanese. The vertical kana repeat marks 〱 (unvoiced) and 〲 (voiced) resemble the hiragana character ku (く), giving them their name, Template:Nihongo. They stretch to fill the space typically occupied by two characters. When these need to be used on the Internet to faithfully represent old texts, "／＼" and "／″＼" are often used instead, as there is no horizontal equivalent.
If a dakuten is added, it applies to the first character of the repeated word. For example, tokorodokoro could be written vertically as Template:Nihongo plus this mark.
Alternatively, multiple single-character iteration marks can be used, as in ところゞゝゝ tokorodokoro or 馬鹿々々しい bakabakashii. This practice is also uncommon in modern writing, though it is occasionally seen in horizontal writing as a substitute for the vertical repeat mark.
Unlike the kana iteration mark, if the first kana is voiced, the "unvoiced" version 〱 alone will repeat the word, including the voiced mark.
See also
es:Símbolo ideográfico de iteración fr:Marque d'itération ja:踊り字 th:โดโนะจิเท็น
Categories: Kana | Kanji