gi / ぎ
The second of the G row — き with two tiny ticks (゛) becomes 'gi'. Opens words for banks, keys, and silver.
Pronunciation
The character ぎ represents the syllable 'gi', a hard 'g' followed by 'i'. It is き with the dakuten — two small marks at the upper right that voice the consonant from 'k' to 'g'.
ぎ is き (ki) plus the dakuten ゛. It appears in 銀行 (ginkou, "bank"), 銀 (gin, "silver"), 鍵 (kagi, "key"), 餃子 (gyouza, the dumpling — using combined kana ぎょ). Like the rest of the G row, word-initial ぎ is a crisp /gi/ while mid-word ぎ often softens to /ŋi/. The visual is straightforward: just write き, then add the two tick marks.
How to write ぎ
Trace ぎ 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 き exactly: stroke 1 a short horizontal at the top; stroke 2 a longer horizontal below it; stroke 3 a curving vertical that drops down through both horizontals; stroke 4 a small detached hook at the lower left (modern fonts often connect strokes 3 and 4, but they're traditionally written separately).
Add the dakuten (゛): two small tick marks at the upper right of the character. Stroke 5 is the upper tick; stroke 6 is the lower tick. Both are quick and tiny.
Origin
Hiragana ぎ shares its base shape with き, which evolved from the kanji 幾 (ki, "how many"). The dakuten ゛ was added later as a diacritic; the same mark converts き → ぎ, く → ぐ, け → げ, and so on across the K row.
Common words starting with ぎ
Printable practice sheet
Print this worksheet to practice writing ぎ by hand — the top row shows the stroke order to trace, then fill the blank squares.
Lock it into memory
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