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v t e

Thesokuon (促音) is aJapanese symbol in the form of a smallhiragana orkatakanatsu, as well as the various consonants represented by it. In less formal language, it is calledchiisai tsu (小さいつ) orchiisana tsu (小さなつ), meaning "smalltsu".^[1] It serves multiple purposes in Japanese writing.

In both hiragana and katakana, thesokuon appears as atsu reduced in size:

The main use of thesokuon is to mark ageminate consonant,^[1] which is represented in mostromanization systems by the doubling of the consonant, except thatHepburn romanization writes a geminatech astch. It denotes the gemination of the initial consonant of the symbol that follows it.

Examples:

The sokuon never appears at the beginning of a word or before a vowel (a,i,u,e, oro), and rarely appears before a syllable that begins with the consonantsn,m,r,w, ory. (In words and loanwords that require geminating these consonants,ン (n),ム (mu),ル (ru),ウ (u), andイ (i) are usually used, respectively, instead of the sokuon.) In addition, it does not appear before voiced consonants (g,z,d, orb), or beforeh, except in loanwords, or distorted speech, or dialects. However, uncommon exceptions exist for stylistic reasons: For example, the Japanese name of thePokémon speciesCramorant isウッウ, pronounced/uʔu/.^[2]

The sokuon is also used at the end of a sentence, to indicate aglottal stop (IPA[ʔ], a sharp or cut-off articulation),^[3] which may indicate angry or surprised speech. This pronunciation is also used for exceptions mentioned before (e.g., a sokuon before a vowel kana). There is no standard way of romanizing the sokuon that is at the end of a sentence. InEnglish writing,^{[clarification needed]} this is often rendered as anem dash. Other conventions are to render it ast or as an apostrophe.

In theInternational Phonetic Alphabet, the sokuon is transcribed with either a colon-like length mark or a doubled consonant:

• kite (来て, "come") – /kite/
• kitte (切手, "postage stamp") – /kitːe/ or/kitte/
• asari (あさり, "clams") – /asari/
• assari (あっさり, "easily") – /asːari/ or/assari/

The sokuon represents amora, thus for example the wordNippon (日本, Japan) consists of only two syllables, but four morae: ni-p-po-n.^[4]

Major Japanese dictionaries listsokusei (促声,lit. 'rushed voice'), as a synonym for sokuon (促音,lit. 'rushed sound').[5]^[6][7] This suggests an origin inMiddle Chinese phonology, wheresokusei (traditional Chinese:促聲), also known asnisshō, nissei (入聲, literally "entering voice"), referred to achecked tone, or a syllable that ends in anunreleased plosive (see促聲). 促聲 contrasts with舒聲 (literally "leisurely voice") which is a syllable that ends in avowel,semivowel, ornasal (see舒聲).

TheMeiji-era linguistŌshima Masatake used the termssokuon ("plosive") andhatsuon ("nasal") to describe ending consonants in Chinese (which he calledShinago (支那語), an outdated term used from theEdo period until after World War II^[5][6]). These sounds were classified as "labial" (唇內,shinnai), "lingual" (舌內,zetsunai) and "guttural" (喉內,kōnai).Sokuon, in particular, were classified as follows:[p̚] is the "labial plosive" (唇內促音),[t̚] is the "lingual plosive" (舌內促音), and[k̚] is the "guttural plosive" (喉內促音).^[8] Another of Ōshima's descriptions even more explicitly related the termssokuon andhatsuon to thefour tones of Middle Chinese.^[9]

Modern Japanesesokuon arose, in no small part, fromconsonant assimilation that occurred when anEarly Middle Japanese approximation of a Chinesesokuon, such aspu (labial),t(i) (lingual) orki/ku (guttural), was followed by anobstruent (plosive orfricative).^[10]

In addition to Japanese, sokuon is used inOkinawan katakana orthographies to represent glottal or ejective consonants.Ainu katakana uses a smallッ both for a finalt-sound and to represent a sokuon (there is no ambiguity however, as gemination isallophonic with syllable-finalt).

There are several methods ofentering the sokuon using a computer or word-processor, such asxtu,ltu,ltsu, etc. Some systems, such asKotoeri formacOS and the Microsoft IME, generate a sokuon if an applicable consonant letter is typed twice; for exampletta generatesった.

Braille:

• Computer encodings

• Japanese phonology gives a detailed description of the sound system of Japanese.
• Gemination
• Chōonpu

• Fujihiko Kaneda, Rika Samidori (1989).Easy hiragana: first steps to reading and writing basic Japanese. Passport Books. pp. 74−78.

Look up促音,っ, orッ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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• Japanese phonology
• Japanese writing system terms

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