The small ‘tsu’

The role of the small ‘tsu’ (hir. っ, kat. ッ) we usually are exposed to is an indication to extend the duration of the consonant that follows it. However, if we follow such simple rule we are bound to the puzzled at finding the small ‘tsu’ at the beginning and ending words, where it would not make sense. Here are cases where we will find the small ‘tsu’ as a consonant doubler and other situations.

‘tsu’ as a consonant doubler

A ‘tsu’ before {s, z, sh, j} doubles their duration; this happens in both hiragana and katakana:

• hiragana:
   
  
  
  

  English
  coffee shop
  straight

  magazine
  together

  
  

  romaji
  kissaten
  massugu

  zasshi
  isshio

  
  

  kana
  きっさてん
  まっすぐ

  ざっし
  いっしょ

  
  

  sounds…
  ki-s-sa-ten
  ma-s-su-gu

  za-sh-shi
  i-sh-sho

  
  
• katakana:
   
  
  
  

  English
  massage
  lesson
  message

  goods
  pizzeria
  badge

  flash
  rush hour
  fashion

  
  

  romaji
  massaaji
  ressun
  messeeji

  guzzu
  pizzeria
  bajji

  furasshu
  rasshuawa
  fasshon

  
  

  kana
  マッサージ
  レッスン
  メッセージ

  グッズ
  ピッゼリア
  バッジ

  フラッシュ
  ラッシュアワー
  ファッション

  
  

  sounds…
  ma-s-sa-a-ji
  re-s-su-n
  me-s-se-e-ji

  gu-z-zu
  pi-z-ze-ri-a
  ba-j-ji

  fu-ra-sh-shu
  ra-sh-shu-a-wa-a
  fa-sh-sho-n

  
  

In romaji, there is no distinction of whether we are extending an ‘s-‘ or an ‘sh-‘; both are written as extending an ‘s’ but, obviously, we don’t extend a ‘sh’ with an ‘s’. Ideally, we would indicate a double ‘sh’ with another ‘sh’, but the convention is to write it as an ‘s’; hence, we write ざっし in romaji as ‘zasshi’ but we actually pronounce it as ‘za-sh-shi’, instead of ‘za-s-shi’.

‘tsu’ as a pause

We cannot extend the duration of consonants other than {s, z, sh, j} because they have explosive sounds. For example, we can hold an ‘s’ or a ‘z’ until we turn blue, but there is no way to hold, say, a ‘p’ or a ‘k’ or a ‘ch’. In these cases when we cannot extend the duration of a consonant, a ‘tsu’ before any of them indicates a small pause, which is technically called a glottal stop. In romaji we indicate this pause doubling the consonant that follows the ‘tsu’, e.g., っこ becomes ‘kko’; the exception is the case of っち that we write as ‘tch’ instead of ‘chch’.

• hiragana:
   
  
  
  

  English
  it’s fine
  a little
  ticket

  
  

  romaji
  kekkou
  chotto
  kippu

  
  

  kana
  けっこう
  ちょっと
  きっぷ

  
  

  sounds…
  ke-()-ko-o
  cho-()-to
  ki-()-pu

  
  
• katakana:
   
  
  
  

  English
  kitchen
  pocket
  cookie

  
  

  romaji
  kitchin
  poketto
  kukkii

  
  

  kana
  キッチン
  ポケット
  クッキー

  
  

  sounds…
  ki-()-chi-n
  po-ke-()-to
  ku-()-ki-i

  
  

っ as a sudden stop

We indicate an abrupt end of a word with a っ; this dynamic happens a lot in dialogs so we will find it often in mangas.

In the scene above, both the words ‘kudasai’ (‘Please, do for me’) and ‘hayaku’ (‘fast!’ or ‘hurry up!’) are finished abruptly, so they end with a small ‘tsu’: ‘くださいっ‘ and ‘早くっ‘. In this case, the woman said the words as strong requests, i.e., as orders, so in English we could have expressed them as ‘Please!’ and ‘Hurry up!’, even though they are not actually exclamations. If the woman had been interrupted mid-word while she was saying ‘kudasai’, we would have written it in English as, say, ‘Plea－’ while, in Japanese, it would have been ‘くだっ‘.

Below there is a second example that matches a dialog in a manga with its anime adaptation. In the scene, a girl appears suddenly on the other side of the classroom window and startles a second girl that was happily yawning, waiting for the class to start. Both the greeting and the surprise interjection end abruptly, so in the written dialog, we find both ending with a っ. In the anime, we can see that this っ actually is not spoken at all but, instead, it is simply a written indication of an abrupt ending.

っ as a word connector

Japanese are masters of abbreviation; many words are abbreviated using ‘tsu’ as a bridge to connect them to the next word. A common word with this trait is the word ‘いち’ (‘ichi’, one), which is often replaced by ‘いっ’, but the abbreviation is common for many other words too:

って as a quote mark

In English, we use quotes to isolate words that become the ‘target’ of a comment; in Japanese, the particle ‘to’ and its casual version, ‘tte’, play the same role [Nilep, Fujimoto]. ‘tte’ looks particularly strange because it appears that it is beginning the word, while in reality it is just the follow up to the words that we are quoting. Let’s see this with an example:

What’s a “Blade Runner”?

 
The speaker is Elle, a replicant in the “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” series, who is trying to recover her lost memories, and is asking about people called “blade runners”. We write “Blade runner” between quotes because those are the words that Elle is isolating to become the target of her question. In Japanese there is a marker that isolates some words as a quote. The casual version of this marker is って, or ‘tte’, i.e., it is a glotal stop followed by ‘te’, as is ‘()-te’. In the clip above Elle is saying:

As we can see above, the Japanese って plays the same role in casual Japanese as the English quotes; we place this って at the location of the closing quote; we have to infer the location of the opening quote from context.

っ as the -る verb suffix

People speaking in casual form tend to replace the る ending of the casual verb form with っ, so basically they do a glotal stop before continuing with the sentence. The following are two examples from a manga, with the corresponding audio from the anime adaptation. In the first example, the manga dialog of ならあっけど was, actually, pronunced without the glotal stop in the anime, as ならあるけど; in the second example, the glotal stop in the manga of してくっから, instead of してくるから, was kept in the anime: