Lesson 7 of 12
Kana Sprint 7 — the small ones
about 5 minutes
After this lesson you can
- Read a small ゃ, ゅ or ょ as part of one beat with the character before it.
- Read a small っ as a pause, and tell it apart from a full-size つ.
Words this lesson teaches
- きっさてん
- coffee shop — ki-(pause)-sa-te-n, five beats
- ちょっと
- a little, a moment — cho-(pause)-to, three beats
- きょう
- today — kyo-u, two beats
- がっこう
- school — ga-(pause)-ko-u
- べんきょう
- study — be-n-kyo-u
What it explains
A small ゃゅょ makes one beat out of two characters
It attaches only to a character in the i column — き, し, ち, に, ひ, み, り and their voiced versions — and it eats the i. きや is ki-ya, two beats. きゃ is kya, one. This matters because Japanese rhythm is counted in beats, and reading きゃ as two is the difference between sounding like a learner and being misheard: びょういん is hospital and びよういん is a hair salon, and the only difference is the size of one character.
A small っ is a silence you have to hold
It is never pronounced. It stops the sound, holds for one beat, and then the consonant after it comes out doubled. きて is come; きって is a stamp. English does not do this, so the instinct is to skip the pause, and skipping it turns one word into another. Nothing follows a small っ except a consonant — it never ends a word except in writing that is imitating a sharp cut-off.
Reading it when the size is hard to see
On a small screen the difference between つ and っ is a few pixels. Two things help. A small character never starts a word, so a つ at the front of a word is always full size. And a small っ is always followed by a consonant, never by a vowel — つあ is possible, っあ is not.