Hi! I’m a total beginner in learning Japanese and I’m a bit confused on the use of the character つ in some words? Because I know it’s pronounced ‘tsu’, but sometimes I would see it in words like 行ってきます (ittekimasu), which is pronounced with no tsu sound, does it change based on context? Explain it to me like I’m 5 please thank you 🙂
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7 comments
The small “tsu” っ simply stresses the consonant sound that comes after. So in 切符 (きっぷ) for example, it is not pronounced ki-pu, but kip-pu. っ never makes a tsu sound, only the larger つ does. As for why a small version of つ was chosen to have this use, I don’t know.
つっつっつっ
they’re not the same character, the small one is a gemination-point/glottal-stop sound that takes the same amount of time to say as any other character but has no sound
i.e. it’s the sound of the “-” in “uh-oh”
https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/
It’s a little one. “The small kana っ/ッ, known as sokuon, are identical but somewhat smaller. They are mainly used to indicate consonant gemination and commonly used at the end of lines of dialogue in fictional works as a symbol for a glottal stop.”
Reference [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsu_(kana))
small one makes the next consonant double. you actually have to hold it.
english examples of this would be things like hot tea, top part, rock concert, where the consonant between the words is held for a moment. (not things like hippo, sicko, butter.) but in japanese it’s within a word too.
The small tsu makes the sound of the following letter double , not a regular tsu .
Like (ittekimasu) there are 2 ts
I will explain it very basically. When there is a small tsu っ / ッ, it means that the following sound is pronounced longer, and adds a double letter. The fact they are the same characters for the larger tsu’s is irrelevant.
For example, in ittekimasu, it is the reason for the double t’s. It is the same for the katakana version of tsu. I’ll use Pocky as an example here, ポッキ, without the tsu it would be spelled as Poki. The tsu means it is now spelled as Pokki and the consonant is pronounced longer, like pock-kee.
More examples, if a small tsu comes before literally any character, for example, te, it would change it to tte. More examples include ki changing to kki, to changing to tto, you get it
I am a native Japanese speaker.
I have never thought of the small “っ” as particularly difficult.
However, I was surprised to learn that there is no similar pronunciation in English.And I realized that it is difficult to explain.
I realized that Japanese people have a hard time pronouncing English, but there is such a pattern.