Talk:Sokuon

Writing a script

I'm writing a script to convert Hiragana into Romaji. Can someone tell me which kana can come after the little tsu?

A table would help. --Uncle Ed 21:46, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

It can appear in front of the the K, S, T and P kana (which includes shi, chi and tsu). In standard romanisation the 'chi' (being one of the 't' column) turns into 'tchi' if it has the sokuon; the other irregular ones turn into 'ttsu' and 'sshi'.

And also, for the youon (the ones which have き、し、ち and ぴ in them) this applies too... so you have words like げっきょう equals geっkiyou (gekkyou/wages) and はっぴ equals haっpi ゃく (happyu/800). Again if you're romanising, bear in mind that 'chi' with little tsu becomes 'tchi', and so 'chu' 'tchu', cho tcho, cha tcha (like the novel 'Botchan': ぼっちゃん).

So that means there are 20 kana that it can be put in front of plus another 15 youon sounds (unless some combinations simply never happen...). I think that's it. Oh, and it is possible I suppose that it's put in other places in Japanese approximations of foreign sounds, but I can't think of them. That'd be katakana anyway. 163.1.42.115 01:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much, "163". I need to add this info to the article, as well as to my Javascript program. --Uncle Ed 15:36, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

In katakana, it's possible to have ベッド (beddo, bed), バッハ (Bahha, Bach), etc. I can't think of any instance of it applying to N, M, Y, R kanas either. Keith Galveston (talk) 09:47, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Where sukuon can appear

The article says "The sokuon cannot appear at the beginning of a sentence." Isn't the situation more general, that sokuon cannot appear at the beginning of a word? —Largo Plazo (talk) 13:51, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

No, the sokuon cannot. Oda Mari (talk) 07:14, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Informally, you can use っていうか, etc. Dekimasuよ! 14:06, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

romaji

Are there anyone who knows how phrases like "げっ" is transcribed, where sokuon comes at the end of a word? Keith Galveston ~sign your posts on the talk page!~ (talk) 09:08, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, conventional forms of Japanese romanization (nippon-siki, kunrei, and Hepburn) do not make any prescriptions as to how to deal with the utterance-ending "small tsu" (this isn't a sokuon, BTW, in any technical sense). After all, this small tsu, typically representing a glottal stop, is not phonemic. For me personally, I typically end up using either hs in romanization, or exclamation points and other forms of exaggeration in translation. If your talking about IPA transcription, however, you would presumably use the symbol that represents a glottal stop, that being a "ʔ". --24.20.172.130 (talk) 07:30, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I see. Thanks! Keith Galveston (talk) 09:44, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Why っ?

Why is this kana a small っ? What does "tsu" have to do with gemination? 137.205.74.30 (talk) 19:47, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Take a look at the shape of Hiragana TSU. Isn't it like a lasso graping the constant from the Kana on the right and putting it on the end of the left kana? That's why it is choosen. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.7.80.220 (talk) 13:55, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The answer is probably lost in history. Maybe the sokuon once sounded like "tsu", but later went through a sound change before certain consonants. (Note that the sokuon was once written as a full-size "tsu". Only later did it come to be written smaller.) 69.159.196.72 (talk) 20:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

R example

The sokuon appears before r in a handful of transcriptions of italian words, e.g. ファルファッレ.--93.220.11.50 (talk) 18:09, 30 October 2010 (UTC)