Wikipedia

Sokuon

Not to be confused withSukūn,an Arabic ring-shaped diacritic marking amute consonant.

Thesokuon(Xúc âm)is aJapanese symbolin the form of a smallhiraganaorkatakanatsu,as well as the various consonants represented by it. In less formal language, it is calledchiisai tsu(Tiểu さいつ)orchiisana tsu(Tiểu さなつ),meaning "smalltsu".[1]It serves multiple purposes in Japanese writing.

Appearance

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In both hiragana and katakana, thesokuonappears as atsureduced in size:

Full-sized Sokuon
Hiragana つ っ
Katakana ツ ッ

Use in Japanese

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The main use of thesokuonis to mark ageminateconsonant,[1]which is represented in mostromanization systemsby the doubling of the consonant, except thatHepburn romanizationwrites a geminatechastch.It denotes the gemination of the initial consonant of the symbol that follows it.

Examples:

  • Pocky,a Japanese snack food, is written in kana asポッキー,which is
    ポ(po)
    ッ(sokuon)
    キ(ki)
    ー(chōonpu)
    In rōmaji, this is writtenpokkī,with thesokuonrepresented by the doubledkconsonant.
  • Đãi って(matte),thete formof the verbĐãi つ(matsu,"wait" ),is composed of:
    Đãi(ma) (kanji)
    っ(sokuon)
    て(te)
    In the rōmaji rendering,matte,thesokuonis represented by the doubling of thetconsonant.
  • こっち(kotchi),meaning "here", is composed of:
    こ(ko)
    っ(sokuon)
    ち(chi)
    InHepburn romanization,kotchi,thesokuonis represented by thetconsonant, even though the following consonant isch.This is because rōmajichactually represents[t͡ɕ](voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate), and the sokuon before it doubles the[t]sound. TheKunrei-shikiandNihon-shikiromanization systems write this syllable asti(and its geminate version astti) so the exception does not arise.

The sokuon never appears at the beginning of a word or before a vowel (a,i,u,e,oro), and rarely appears before a syllable that begins with the consonantsn,m,r,w,ory.(In words and loanwords that require geminating these consonants,ン(n),ム(mu),ル(ru),ウ(u),andイ(i)are usually used, respectively, instead of the sokuon.) In addition, it does not appear before voiced consonants (g,z,d,orb), or beforeh,except in loanwords, or distorted speech, or dialects. However, uncommon exceptions exist for stylistic reasons: For example, the Japanese name of thePokémonspeciesCramorantisウッウ,pronounced/uʔu/.[2]

The sokuon is also used at the end of a sentence, to indicate aglottal stop(IPA[ʔ],a sharp or cut-off articulation),[3]which may indicate angry or surprised speech. This pronunciation is also used for exceptions mentioned before (e.g., a sokuon before a vowel kana). There is no standard way of romanizing the sokuon that is at the end of a sentence. InEnglishwriting,[clarification needed]this is often rendered as anem dash.Other conventions are to render it astor as an apostrophe.

In theInternational Phonetic Alphabet,the sokuon is transcribed with either a colon-like length mark or a doubled consonant:

  • kite(Lai て,"come" )–/kite/
  • kitte(Thiết thủ,"postage stamp" )–/kitːe/or/kitte/
  • asari(あさり,"clams" )–/asari/
  • assari(あっさり,"easily" )–/asːari/or/assari/

The sokuon represents amora,thus for example the wordNippon(Japan)consists of only two syllables, but four morae: ni-p-po-n.[4]

Etymology

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Major Japanese dictionaries listsokusei(Xúc thanh,literally "rushed voice";Simplified Chineseandshinjitaispelling),as a synonym for xúc âm (sokuon,literally "rushed sound" ).[5][6][7]This suggests an origin inMiddle Chinesephonology, wheresokusei(Xúc thanh,Traditional Chineseandkyūjitaispelling),also known asnisshō, nissei(Nhập thanh,literally "entering voice" ),referred to achecked tone,or a syllable that ends in anunreleased plosive(seew:zh: Xúc thanh). Xúc thanh contrasts withThư thanh(literally "leisurely voice" ) which is a syllable that ends in avowel,semivowel,ornasal(seew:zh: Thư thanh).

TheMeiji-eralinguistŌshima Masatakeused the termssokuon( "plosive") andhatsuon( "nasal" ) to describe ending consonants in Chinese (which he calledShinago(Chi na ngữ),an outdated term used from theEdo periodto after World War II[5][6]). These sounds were classified as "labial"(Thần nội,shinnai),"lingual"(Thiệt nội,zetsunai)and "guttural"(Hầu nội,kōnai).Sokuon,in particular, were classified as follows:[p̚]is the "labial plosive"(Thần nội xúc âm),[t̚]is the "lingual plosive"(Thiệt nội xúc âm),and[k̚]is the "guttural plosive"(Hầu nội xúc âm).[8]Another of Ōshima's descriptions even more explicitly related the termssokuonandhatsuonto thefour tones of Middle Chinese.[9]

Modern Japanesesokuonarose, in no small part, fromconsonant assimilationthat occurred when anEarly Middle Japaneseapproximation of a Chinesesokuon,such aspu(labial),t(i)(lingual) orki/ku(guttural), was followed by anobstruent(plosive orfricative).[10]

Use in other languages

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In addition to Japanese, sokuon is used inOkinawankatakana orthographies to represent glottal or ejective consonants.Ainukatakana uses a smallッboth for a finalt-sound and to represent a sokuon (there is no ambiguity however, as gemination isallophonicwith syllable-finalt).

Computer input

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There are several methods ofentering the sokuon using a computer or word-processor,such asxtu,ltu,ltsu,etc. Some systems, such asKotoeriformacOSand the Microsoft IME, generate a sokuon if an applicable consonant letter is typed twice; for examplettageneratesった.

Other representations

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Braille:

Character information
Preview っ ッ ｯ
Unicode name HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL TU KATAKANA LETTER SMALL TU HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER SMALL TU
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 12387 U+3063 12483 U+30C3 65391 U+FF6F
UTF-8 227 129 163 E3 81 A3 227 131 131 E3 83 83 239 189 175 EF BD AF
GB 18030 164 195 A4 C3 165 195 A5 C3 132 49 151 49 84 31 97 31
Numeric character reference っ っ ッ ッ ｯ ｯ
Shift JIS[11] 130 193 82 C1 131 98 83 62 175 AF
EUC-JP[12] 164 195 A4 C3 165 195 A5 C3 142 175 8E AF
EUC-KR[13]/UHC[14] 170 195 AA C3 171 195 AB C3
Big5(non-ETEN kana)[15] 198 199 C6 C7 199 91 C7 5B
Big5(ETEN/HKSCS)[16] 199 74 C7 4A 199 191 C7 BF

References

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  1. ^abKawahara, Shigeto."The phonetics of obstruent geminates,sokuon"(PDF).Rutgers University.S2CID145942.Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 2015-11-23.
  2. ^The pronunciation is verifiable here:Nintendo Direct (September 5, 2019; 23 min 48 s).Retrieved 2019-09-05.
  3. ^"What is that small tsu at the end of a sentence?".sljfaq.org.Retrieved2019-06-28.
  4. ^Nick Miller, Anja Lowit (2014).Motor Speech Disorders: A Cross-Language Perspective.Multilingual Matters. p. 223.ISBN978-1-78309-232-1.
  5. ^abNihon Kokugo Daijiten
  6. ^abDaijirin
  7. ^Daijisen
  8. ^Ōshima, Masatake (July 1897). "Bát âm と xúc âm".Âm vận mạn lục(in Japanese). pp. 45–47.
  9. ^Ōshima, Masatake (5 February 1899)."Cổ kim nhập thanh の bỉ giác".Đông kinh độc lập tạp chí(in Japanese) (21): 13.
  10. ^Frellesvig, Bjarke (2010). "Part II: Early Middle Japanese".A History of the Japanese Language.Cambridge University Press.
  11. ^Unicode Consortium(2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]."Shift-JIS to Unicode".
  12. ^Unicode Consortium;IBM."EUC-JP-2007".International Components for Unicode.
  13. ^Unicode Consortium;IBM."IBM-970".International Components for Unicode.
  14. ^Steele, Shawn (2000)."cp949 to Unicode table".Microsoft/Unicode Consortium.
  15. ^Unicode Consortium(2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]."BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
  16. ^van Kesteren, Anne."big5".Encoding Standard.WHATWG.
  • Fujihiko Kaneda, Rika Samidori (1989).Easy hiragana: first steps to reading and writing basic Japanese.Passport Books. pp. 74−78.

See also

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Look upXúc âm,っ,orッin Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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