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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.

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 (5)

Written by sharpshard, on 10-11-2008 21:11
is there a liitle pause with the double consonant?
did i guess it right?

hiiiiiiiii
Written by japanese noob, on 30-10-2008 13:52
javascript:ac_smilie('')

its not that hard
Written by japanese noob, on 30-10-2008 13:50
javascript:ac_smilie

hai
Written by Seasun, on 16-10-2008 04:27
now I get it...they sound some what familiar, but r spell different(well jst add another letter) ^.~

oups
Written by violet, on 30-06-2008 09:59
it's a little bit complicatedjavascript:ac_smilie('