In this lesson you will learn how to pronounce double consonants, marked in Japanese writing with “little tsu”.
In Japanese, there is a certain character marking what many Western languages would be called a double consonant. It is called chiisai tsu, little tsu, as it is written with a smaller version of the character pronounced tsu. The symbol is different in hiragana and katakana. Compare it to the full size symbol in the table below.
| Full-size | “Small tsu” | |
| Hiragana: |
つ | っ |
| Katakana: |
ツ | ッ |
Listen and Learn
Listen to and compare the sounds in the following table of examples, going from left to right, one row at a time.
Please note that the left and right column contains totally different words. We have just given these examples to let you hear the difference of including or not including っ (little tsu).
| している | 知っている |
| shite iru | shitte iru |
| Doing (present progressive tense) |
Knowing (present progressive tense) |
| 来ている |
切っている |
| kite iru | kitte iru |
| Coming (present progressive tense) |
Cutting (present progressive tense) |
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7:34 pm on August 29th, 2011
Ah, it was always explained to me by other sites as shi-te versuss shit-te, in terms of phonetics, however, with this, I understand that the little tsu is a short pause, which makes sense, seeing as how that’s what onomatopoeias in manga use it for.
3:22 pm on July 4th, 2009
wow, the small little “tsu” sure does make alot of difference in meaning.
1:10 am on March 5th, 2009
Ignore this comment.
4:21 pm on February 24th, 2009
little tsu tends to make a “jumping/discrete sound” of the prior vowel isn’t it? like seperate the words. and the second sound should have emphasis.
4:08 pm on February 18th, 2009
And I thought it would be something like ‘ichi’ and ‘ich-chi”, not ‘ichi’ and ‘I-chi’! Thank you for you wonderful examples, though. You’ve cleared a lot of other confusion
11:33 pm on January 10th, 2009
Sorry for confusing you. The words in the left and right column are totally different words, just given as examples of how “little tsu” makes the pronunciation change. There is no other connection between the words in the left and right column.
8:10 pm on January 10th, 2009
This is so confusing. Just by adding a double consonant, the whole Kanji and structure of the word changes!
10:15 am on December 26th, 2008
thanks!this is helpful ‘coz i always makes mistake on pronounciation.
5:07 pm on December 24th, 2008
i can always go through this again,thats what a problems with is this.