I think this was answered before but, I'm having some difficulty understanding the small tsu (つ)… - Feed Post by Chiroptera
I think this was answered before but, I'm having some difficulty understanding the small tsu (つ) in words or sentences
Can someone explain how this works?
Can someone explain how this works?
posted by Chiroptera
Comments 5
it creates a pause or break in pronunciation. So, がっこう has a brief break between ’が’ and ’こう’ if you go to translator you can hear the difference. がっこう = gakkou がこう = gakou
The small tsu repeats the first consonant right after it so if the hiragana right after it is ka, ki, ku, ke, or ko, it will just repeat k, or if it's sa, shi, etc, it will repeat s. Like temrpro43 has mentioned above, がっこう becomes gakkou.
Another example is いっしょうに, which is written as isshouni in romaji
Ah thanks guys. That actually really helps!
I don't know if my opinion is right, but the small つ seems like an abbreviation of a word. よっつ or 四つ abbreviates よん as よっ. Otherwise, よんつ sounds weird.- A small tsu doubles the consonant after it, like I have mentioned. You can check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokuon if you are unsure.
As for abbreviation that you are talking about, yes, sometimes numbers like that sound weird (try giving someone 777 as a number by pronouncing it as nana instead of shichi), that's why Japanese do have multiple ways of pronouncing a single number, just like how 600 becomes roppyaku ろっぴゃく (and notice the small tsu there, which doubles the p).
Yottsu is just a counter word and it is officially written that way. The tsu doesn't play any part in contracting/abbreviating it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_counter_word
