Problem with two katakana letters.

[Maxim Posthumus]

There's two Katakana letters that I've NEVER seen in use. They are ヵ(small Ka) ヶ (small Ke)
Is any word that uses those letters?
When are they used (in what structures)

 

[Mozz]

Are you seeing these in manga?

 

[Maxim Posthumus]

Are you seeing these in manga?

In manga?
Noooooo, I've seen it ONLY in the font.
I've never seen it in any word.

 

[Mozz]

In manga?
Noooooo, I've seen it ONLY in the font.
I've never seen it in any word.

Well, I'm only asking because I've seen small versions of many characters as more of a Cha-kakakaka, etc.

 

[Murgatroyd]

They're used in certain compounds, such as in 一ヶ月 (ikkagetsu) = one month, to avoid confusion with 一月 (ichigatsu) = January.
They can also be found in a number of place names.
The two characters are interchangable in most cases.

 

[Zhen Lin]

To expand:

An iteration of the different ways to write ikkagetsu, and the number of Google hits:
* 一ヶ月 2,400,000
* 一ヵ月 360,000
* 一カ月 318,000
* 一か月 173,000
* 一箇月 37,200

Hmm. Odd. I would have thought that 一ヶ月 and 一か月 would be the most common... [maybe the results are being skewed by thousands of examples showing how to use small カ... then again, traditional Chinese sources should also be skewing 一箇月...]

Anyway - when paired with a number, it will generally be an abbreviation for the 個 or 箇 counters.

About its use place names - generally it's ga there - as in 関ヶ原町 Kasumigahara-chō [Gifu], 鳩ヶ谷市 Hatogaya-shi [Saitama], 袖ヶ浦市 Sodegaura-shi [Chiba], 茅ヶ崎市 Chigasaki-shi [Kanagawa].

Sometimes, it will be written with a big ケ: 市ケ谷駅 Ichigaya Station [Tokyo] and
鎌ケ谷市 Kamagaya-shi [Chiba].

One interesting case is [wp]Kasumigaseki[/wp] - the region itself is spelt 霞が関, and the metro station, site of the [wp]Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway[/wp], is spelt 霞ケ関. But if you look at a photo, it seems as if it's 霞ヶ関. But the official website says 霞ケ関. (And in the meantime, my IME insists on giving only 霞ヶ関)

Anyway - there is a single reason for all this madness. To be pedantic, although small-ケ has the shape of, well, a small-ケ - it is actually a simplified form of - you guessed it - 箇. The intermediate form was probably 个, or similar.

 

[Murgatroyd]

To expand:

An iteration of the different ways to write ikkagetsu, and the number of Google hits:
* 一ヶ月 2,400,000
* 一ヵ月 360,000
* 一カ月 318,000
* 一か月 173,000
* 一箇月 37,200

Hmm. Odd. I would have thought that 一ヶ月 and 一か月 would be the most common... [maybe the results are being skewed by thousands of examples showing how to use small カ... then again, traditional Chinese sources should also be skewing 一箇月...]

[...]

The intermediate form was probably 个, or similar.

* 一个月 9,650,000
Simplified Chinese sources seem to be responsible.

 

[Zhen Lin]

Hmm, but I don't think I've ever seen 个 used in Japanese though. Have you encountered this in your study of classical manuscripts?

 

[Murgatroyd]

Not really. I haven't really done all that much study of classical manuscripts. I just felt it was worth checking on.
Restricting the Google search to Japanese pages gets only about a thousand results, and of those, a random sampling suggests that the vast majority are actually in Chinese, or use the term in quoted Chinese.

BTW, I think I've found why Chinese wasn't contributing many results for 一箇月. A search for 一個月 gives 1,590,000 results.

 

[Zhen Lin]

Makes sense. 箇 and 個 are (almost?) semantically identical, and in Chinese and Japanese 箇 is considered a variant of 個.

Interestingly, according to zhongwen.com, 个 is the ancient form.