Sokuon

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Japanese writing

Uses

Rōmaji

	kana - gojūon
n	wa	ra	ya	ma	ha	na	ta	sa	ka	a
tsu	wi	ri		mi	hi	ni	chi	shi	ki	i
゛		ru	yu	mu	fu	nu	tsu	su	ku	u
ー	we	re		me	he	ne	te	se	ke	e
	wo	ro	yo	mo	ho	no	to	so	ko	o

The sokuon (促音, sokuon^?) is a Japanese symbol consisting of a small hiragana or katakana tsu. In less academic language it is called chiisai tsu (小さいつ, chiisai tsu^?) or chiisana tsu (小さなつ, chiisana tsu^?), meaning "little tsu". Compare to a full-sized tsu:

	Full-sized	Sokuon
Hiragana	つ	っ
Katakana	ツ	ッ

The sokuon is used for various purposes. The main use is for showing a geminate consonant, which is represented in rōmaji by the "doubling" of the following consonant.

Examples:

Pocky, a Japanese snack food, is written in kana as ポッキー, which is

ポ po

ッ sokuon

キ ki

ー chōon, in romanized Japanese

pokkii, with the sokuon representing the doubling of the k consonant.
Matte, the te form of the verb matsu, is written as 待って, which is:

待 ma (kanji)

っ sokuon

て te, with the sokuon representing the doubling of the t consonant.

The sokuon cannot appear at the beginning of a word, before a vowel kana (a, i, u, e, or o), or before kana containing the consonants n, m, r, w, or y. In addition, it does not appear before voiced consonants (g, z, d, or b), or before h, except in loanwords.

The sokuon is also used at the end of a sentence, to indicate a glottal stop (a sharp or cut-off articulation), which may indicate angry or surprised speech.

In order to enter the sokuon using a computer or word-processor, there are several methods, such as xtu, ltu, ltsu, etc., although some word processors (for example Mac OS X's Kotoeri) will make one if a non-"n" consonant letter is typed twice.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the sokuon sound is marked either with a colon-like mark or a doubled consonant: