by linguists and in dictionaries (or to represent characters in fiction who speak that way). This is called . Another rare application of handakuten is on the r-series, to mark them as explicitly l: , and so forth. This is only done in technical or pedantic contexts, as many Japanese cannot tell the difference between r and l. Additionally, linguists sometimes use to represent in cases when speaker pronounces at the beginning of a word as a moraic nasal. In katakana only, the dakuten may also be added to the character u and a small vowel character to create a sound, as in ヴァ va. However, a hiragana version of this character also exists, with somewhat sporadic compatibility across platforms (). As does not exist in Japanese, this usage applies only to some modern loanwords and remains relatively uncommon, and e.g. Venus is typically transliterated as (bīnasu) instead of (vīnasu). Japanese speakers, however, pronounce both the same, with or , an occasional allophone of intervocalic . An even less common method is to add dakuten to the w-series, reviving the mostly obsolete characters for () and (). is represented by using /u/, as above; becomes despite its normally being silent. Precomposed characters exist for this method as well ( ), although most IMEs do not have a convenient way to enter them. In Ainu texts, handakuten can be used with the katakana to make it a /ts/ sound, ce [tse] (which is interchangeable with ), and is used with small fu to represent a final p, . In addition, handakuten can be combined with either katakana or (tsu and to) to make a [tu̜] sound, or . In informal writing, dakuten is occasionally used on vowels to indicate a shocked or strangled articulation; for example, on or . Dakuten can also be occasionally used with to indicate a guttural hum, growl, or similar sound. Kana iteration marks The dakuten can also be added to hiragana and katakana iteration marks, indicating that the previous kana is repeated with voicing: Both signs are relatively rare, but can occasionally be found in personal names such as Misuzu () or brand names such as Isuzu (いすゞ). In these cases the pronunciation is identical to writing the kana out in full. A longer, multi-character iteration mark called the kunojiten, only used in vertical writing, may also have a dakuten added. Other communicative representations Representations of