Double Consonant

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Double Consonant

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).

二期	日記
niki	nikki
Two periods, two terms	Diary


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)


又	待った
mata	matta
Furthermore	Waited (past tense)


一	一致
ichi	icchi
One	Consistency, Match


スパイ	酸っぱい
supai	suppai
Spy	Sour

Comments (8)

wow, the small little "tsu" sure does make alot of difference in meaning. :shock:

Ignore this comment. :oops:

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.

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 :D

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.

This is so confusing. Just by adding a double consonant, the whole Kanji and structure of the word changes!

thanks!this is helpful 'coz i always makes mistake on pronounciation.

i can always go through this again,thats what a problems with is this.

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