I have a Japanese textbook written in French that has a hiragana table that is missing ぢ. I’ve also seen a French website with the absence of that character.
The websites that do have ぢ (English and French) have the pronunciation as « ji ». The same as じ
I went with the IOS typing system and I got that character as « di ».
Is there a reason this might be missing? Is the character considered rare that it’s not included in some editions?
As far as typing hiragana with Roman letters I’m looking at just seeing what IOS has it as.
Thank you.
3 comments
ぢ and づ exist but only in a few words and aren’t part of any conjugations or anything. 縮む=ちぢむ 気付く=きづく and so on. You need to know them for a couple of these words but they won’t pop up that frequently.
The phenomenon you’re referring to is called yotsugana 四つ仮名: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yotsugana?wprov=sfti1
In Standard Japanese, ぢ is pronounced like じ, and づ is pronounced like ず. ぢ and づ presumably exist because of etymological reasons. You usually find them when a kanji beginning with ち or つ undergo rendaku (voicing). For example: 手(て)＋作り(つくり)＝手作り(てづくり), or 鼻(はな)＋血(ち)＝鼻血(はなぢ).
The other big instance in which you find them is if a word has two ち or つ and the second undergoes voicing: 縮む(ちぢむ), 続く(つづく).
ぢ and づ are only used for a handful of words, and while you shouldn’t encounter those words terribly often, it’s important to know how to read them.
List of words containing ぢ: https://jisho.org/search/*%E3%81%A2*
List of words containing づ: https://jisho.org/search/*%E3%81%A5*
ぢ used to be “di” and づ used to be “du” in ancient japanese im pretty sure, but over time they kind of just turned into じ&づ