da / だ
The first of the D row — た with two tiny ticks (゛) becomes 'da'. The casual copula 'is/am/are' and the start of words for university, who, and body.
Pronunciation
The character だ represents the syllable 'da', a hard 'd' followed by 'a'. It is た with the dakuten — two small marks at the upper right that voice the consonant from 't' to 'd'.
だ is た (ta) plus the dakuten ゛. It's grammatically critical — だ is the plain-form copula, used to end casual statements (これは本だ, "this is a book"). Its polite counterpart is です. It also anchors 誰 (dare, "who"), 大学 (daigaku, "university"), 体 (karada, "body"), 大事 (daiji, "important"), and the returning-home greeting ただいま (tadaima, "I'm home"). Word-initial だ is a crisp /da/; mid-word stays /da/.
How to write だ
Trace だ on the canvas at the top of the page. Animated arrows show each stroke's direction; trace along them and the stroke fills in. Each numbered step below explains what that stroke does.
Write た exactly: stroke 1 a short horizontal at the top; stroke 2 a long vertical that crosses stroke 1 and drops down; stroke 3 a short horizontal on the lower right; stroke 4 a small curving stroke that closes the lower right corner.
Add the dakuten (゛): two small tick marks at the upper right of the character. Strokes 5 and 6 are the two ticks — quick, tiny, sitting clearly above the body.
Origin
Hiragana だ shares its base shape with た, which evolved from the kanji 太 (ta, "thick / great"). The dakuten ゛ was added later as a diacritic to mark voicing; the same mark converts every T-row kana to its D-row counterpart.
Common words starting with だ
Printable practice sheet
Print this worksheet to practice writing だ by hand — the top row shows the stroke order to trace, then fill the blank squares.
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