半濁音化 | Japanese with Anime

In Japanese, handakuonka 半濁音化 is a change in pronunciation similar to rendaku 連濁 in which the syllables ha-hi-fu-he-ho はひふへほ get a handakuten 半濁点, turning into the semi-voiced pa-pi-pu-pe-po ぱぴぷぺぽ.

For example: kinpatsu きんぱつ (金髪), "golden hair, "blond," which combines the morphemes "gold" and "hair," kin きん and hatsu はつ, or ippatsu いっぱつ (一発), "one shot," which combines "one" and "shot," ichi いち and hatsu はつ.

Examples

For reference, some examples of handakuonka.

kan-hai かんはい
kanpai かんぱい (乾杯)
Cheers! (before drinking)
kan-heki かんへき
kanpeki かんぺき (完璧)
Perfect.
en-hitsu えんひつ
enpitsu えんぴつ (鉛筆)
Pencil.
san-ho さんほ
sanpo さんぽ (散歩)
A walk. A stroll. (around the park, and so on.)
sen-fuu-ki せんふうき
senpuuki せんぷうき (扇風機)
Electric fan.

totsu-ha とつは
toppa とっぱ (突破)
Breakthrough.
ichi-hen いちへん
ippen いっぺん (一変)
Complete change.
zetsu-hin ぜつひん
zeppin ぜっぴん (絶品)
Superb piece of work.
kiri-fu きりふ
kippu きっぷ (切符)
Ticket.

Grammar

The handakuonka generally occurs after an n ん or small tsu っ, which represents a "geminate consonant, " sokuon 促音. This small tsu っ usually stems from a different change in pronunciation, called sokuonbin 促音便.

For example:

gatsu がつ (月)
Month.
hi ひ (日)
Day.
gatsu-hi がつひ
gappi がっぴ (月日)
Month and day. The date.

Above, ga' がっ is affected by sokuonbin, while pi ぴ is affected by handakuonka. The two changes are happening simultaneously.

As far as I'm concerned handakuonka is basically the same thing as rendaku, but it turns out that the term rendaku doesn't actually include changing ha-hi-fu-he-ho to pa-pi-pu-pe-po for some reason.

It only includes changing ka-ta-ha-sa かたはさ to ga-da-ba-za がだばざ, and so on. It only includes voiced sounds, with the diacritic dakuten 濁点, not with the handakuten.

If you change ha は to ba ば, it's rendaku, but ha は to pa ぱ is technically not.

han-dan はんだん (判断)
Judgement.
sai-han さいはん
saiban さいばん (裁判)
Trial.
- This is rendaku.
shin-han しんはん
shinpan しんぱん (審判)
Referee. Umpire.
- This isn't rendaku, this is handakuonka.

To make matters worse, handakuonka literally means "handakuon-fication," because the syllables with a handakuten diacritic are called handakuon 半濁音 in Japanese.

In other words, it's not even worth calling this a "term," it just literally describes what's happening: turning an unvoiced syllable into a semi-voiced syllable.

So there are even cases where the term rendaku is used to describe ha-to-ba, but no term at all is used to describe ha-to-pa. For example:

Context: a paper is talking about how number and counter combinations, like ippiki 一匹, "one small animal," and sanbiki 三匹, "three small animals," are pronounced different from normal.
ha-gyou no oto wa, mae no kotoba no gobi ni tsumaru oto (sokuon) ni tsuduku baai wa pa-gyou ni henka suru. kore wa hatsuon-jou no mondai to kangaerareru. shitagatte, ichi, roku, hachi, juu, hyaku wa pa-gyou ni henka shite-iru.
ハ行の音は、前のことばの語尾が詰まる音（促音・っ）に続く場合はパ行に変化する。これは発音上の問題と考えられる。したがって、一、六、八、十、百はパ行に変化している。
As for the ha-row, when the preceding word ends in a sokuon it changes to the pa-row. This is thought to be a matter of pronunciation. Consequently, one, six, eight, ten, one hundred are changing into the pa-row.
- ha-row: ha-hi-fu-he-ho.
- pa-row: pa-pi-pu-pe-po.
mata, mae no kotoba no gobi ga haneru oto (n, hatsuon, bion) ni tsuduku baai wa ba-gyou ni henka shite-iru. kore wa rendaku to yobareru hatsuon-jou no mondai de-aru. shitagatte, san, sen, man wa, ba-gyou ni henka shite-iru. kono rendaku wa, ka-gyou, sa-gyou, ta-gyou nimo okoru.
また、前のことばの語尾が撥ねる音（ん、撥音、鼻音）に続く場合はバ行に変化している。これは連濁と呼ばれる発音上の問題である。したがって、三、千、万は、バ行に変化している。この連濁は、カ行、サ行、タ行にも起こる。
Furthermore, when the preceding word is the nasal vowel n ん it changes into the ba-row. This is a matter of pronunciation called "rendaku." Consequently, three, thousand, ten thousand, are changing into the ba-row. This rendaku also happens in the ka-row, sa-row, and ta-row.

Above, Ito (伊藤, 2004:36) specifically calls the change to the ba-row by the term of rendaku, and even cites the other rows in which rendaku occurs, but provides no term whatsoever for changing ha-row syllables to the pa-row, which is the handakuonka that this article is about.

Beyond this, there's only one moderately interesting and completely useless thing to know about handakuonka.

In modern Japanese, there are basically no kanji whose reading includes pa-pi-pu-pe-po.^{[読みに半濁点が付く漢字 - detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp, accessed 2019-11-13.]}

In other words, there are no morphemes that include pa-pi-pu-pe-po. It's always ha-hi-fu-he-ho, and it only turns into pa-pi-pu-pe-po when suffixed to something. ALWAYS.

Since handakuonka only happens in suffixes, in the middle of words, there are no words that start with pa-pi-pu-pe-po in Japanese.

By which I mean there are no native Japanese words spelled with kanji that start with pa-pi-pu-pe-po, because loan words and mimetic words can start with those.