how often are these hirigana used?

15 comments

1. Sometimes in katakana. Fair amount. You just sound them out to figure them out. I don’t think I have seen them in hiragana. Maybe as a sound effect

2. Very rarely. I’d say practically never, but you might see them in children’s books where katakana has yet to be introduced, but which still deal with foreign loanwords. In those cases, they’ll spell the loanword out in hiragana but have a line of katakana as furigana above it.

   (edit: There’s also the possibility of someone using this style deliberately to imitate children’s books, either in advertising or sometimes in video games. Still not common.)

   The only other situation where you might see this sort of combination is **maybe** as onomatopoeia in a manga.

   (Edit: VERY rarely, you might find some video game from so far back that it lacks katakana due to memory space concerns. I’ve only ever seen one like that, and it did use a few of the example items, if only because it couldn’t write them any other way.)

   (As katakana, the situation is different. Most of these would be fairly normal as katakana loanwords)

3. I’ve only seen them in hiragana as sound effects

4. Fe Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of a…. Hiragana user. Ahem.

5. In hiragana, the top two lines are used quite frequently in Uchinaaguchi (the Okinawan language, a Ryukyuan language).

   For example: the family name 比嘉 is phonetically spelled ふぃじゃ (Fija); “thank you” is 御拝(にふぇー)でーびる (nifee deebiru); 男の子 is 男(うぃきが)ん子(ぐゎ) (wikigangwa).

6. As hiragana pretty rare, like the most likely time you’ll see it is when inputting on your computer before it gets converted to katakana. But I remember once having to input my mother’s maiden name – which when transcribed to Japanese uses one of these sounds – as a security answer in a website and it had to be in hiragana, so I ended up using it. Felt extra secure that day :p

7. My last name has a “va” in it and I had to use ゔぁ when getting a suika card cause there was no katakana option. But that’s the only time I’ve seen it.

8. In my year and a half of studying, the ones I’ve seen the most are the ones with ふ. Next the ones with う and I’ve probably never seen ゔ, since Japanese doesn’t differentiate between “b” and “v” and will definitely prioritize び over ゔぃ.

9. In katakana, mildly often for loan words. By the time you see an example of these combinations in *hiragana*, you’ll be able to recognize them on sight regardless.

10. Alot and you’ll probably see them in every sentence, if you are talking about all Combinations hiragana but only these are kinda rare

11. As hiragana? Extremely rarely.

    As katakana? Fairly often, if you know a lot of foreigners.

12. Never actually saw them

13. whenever I see ゔ I curse Yukichi Fukuzawa on my ¥10,000 note. so 片手落ち.

14. ふぇ、ふぃ、ふぉ、ふむ

    I smell the blood of a Japanese man

15. I’ve literally never seen the last row before, read/ write on the regular… I saw, and I didn’t even know how to pronounce it (until I noticed the English underneath)