Iteration Mark - Japanese

Japanese

Japanese has various iteration marks for its three writing systems, namely kanji, hiragana, and katakana, but only the (horizontal) kanji iteration mark (々) is commonly used today.

In Japanese, iteration marks (Japanese: 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 to represent a duplicated character representing the same morpheme. For example, hito-bito, "people", is usually written 人々, using the kanji for 人 with an iteration mark, 々, rather than 人人, using the same kanji twice, though this latter is allowed, and in this simple case might be used because it is easier to write. By contrast, while 日々 hi-bi "daily, day after day" is written with the iteration mark, as the morpheme is duplicated, 日日 hi-nichi "number of days, date" is written with the character duplicated, because it represents different morphemes (hi versus nichi). Further, while hibi can in principle be written (confusingly) as 日日, hinichi cannot be written as ×日々, since that would imply repetition of the sound as well as the character. In potentially confusing examples such as this, readings can be disambiguated by writing words out in hiragana, so hinichi is often found as 日にち or even ひにち rather than 日日.

Note that sound changes can occur in duplication, which is not reflected in writing, such as 人 hito + 人 hito = 人々 hito-bito (rendaku) or 刻 koku + 刻 koku = 刻々 kok-koku (gemination), though this is also pronounced koku-koku.