Why is there/why do they add や at the end of somewords?

I.e., おちゃ you’ve read the title; I just gave you the simplest example.

5 comments
  1. That makes the ち (chi) into a “chi-ya” aka Cha sound since there is no character for that sound on its own. The character in its place would be た or Ta, which is not the desired sound in a word such as おちゃ。It applies in other such situations as well

  2. Change in reading/pronounciation. It’s to turn ち (chi) into ちゃ (cha).

    Eg. おちや and おちゃ are two different things. おちや would be read as “o – chi – ya” but おちゃ would be read as “o – cha”

    I hope this helps!

  3. This is not added on, its part of how the word is said, just like any other “letters” in japanese “alphabets”. Examples:

    ______________

    お茶(おちゃ) “ocha”

    when a small ゃ is added onto sounds like “shi” or “chi” it shows that the “i” vowel is changing, and its is still all one whole japanese syllable. There is often no “y” sound.

    観客(かんきゃく) “kankyaku”

    when a small ゃ is added to a different sound like “k” or “r”, there often is a “y” sound, and is still part of the same japanese syllable as the one it is attaching to.

    Its not set in stone, and you can learn it word by word to be safe. Just know both versions exist, and the smallness shows its the same syllable. As for it being at the end thats totally coincidence, it can be in the middle or whatever as well.

    なんでもないや “nandemonaiya”

    compare regular size や, this is its own japanese syllable and should not be confused with the other two, again it can be the end or anywhere of a term.

    ____________

    Hope this helps 🙂

  4. When you see the characters や(ya), ゆ(yu) and よ(yo) succeeding another character at a slighter smaller font size than regular ( smallゃ regular や) this means that this is not two different characters but rather one character whose sound is modified by the small character after it.

    So in the case of ち (chi) if you write ちや, this is two characters, and is pronounced chiya. If you write this ちゃ then this is a single character and pronounced cha. Yu and yo simillarly change the pronounciation of other characters. So ちゃ is cha, ちゅ is chu (chi and yu) and ちょ is cho (chi and yo).

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