# little hiragana



## viajero_canjeado

Hi forumers!

I'm about a week into Japanese study and have started messing around with a dictionary. I was startled to find that the entries ぎゆよ and ぎゅよ come up with different entries in the dictionary, which can be found at http://jisho.org/.

Can someone explain to me what the deal with the little hiragana is? Does the pronunciation sound different?

Thanks!


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## Strutter

Hi,

I have got no hits with ぎゆよ nor the other. Anyway for example there are tow Japanese words, きよう（器用） and きょう（今日）, and while you pronounce the first one like ki-yo-o, you have to pronounce the other like saying ki and yo at once first and then o. In that sense きょ works as if to be one letter.

A Japanese text will explain this more.

See you.


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## gold217

Whenever you see a small hiragana character, it "blends" the sound so to speak. 興味　きょうみ　Kyou-mi (hobby/interest) 辞書 じしょ　ji-sho (dictionary)
Also, a small つ　doubles the letter it comes before. 発表　はっぴょう hap-pyou (recital).


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## lordfrikk

Little っ is so-called glottal stop, it indicates a short pause in speech. It is essential to memorie and pronounce words with っ　properly because there are many words that are only differentiated from each other by this small tsu. For example:

きて
kite
_come (-te form of the verb kuru)

きって
_kitte
_postage stamp_

The rest of the small hiragana is used to form diphthongs, eg. "ki"　き + "yo"　よ becomes "kyo"　きょ, "hi"　ひ + "ya"　や becomes "hya"　ひゃ etc. (pronounced as you would expect in English). The only exception to this is when the character preceding the little hiragana is し or じ. In that case it is as follows: "shi" し + "yo"　よ becomes "sho"　しょ, instead of "shyo", "ji"　じ + "ya"　や becomes "ja"　じゃ instead of "jiya" etc.

In hiragana only 3 characters are used for this, "ya" や, "yo"　よ and "yu"　ゆ, but in katakana all vowels can be used, eg. "te"　テ + "i" イ forms "ti" ティ, for example in the word party　(PA-TI) パーティ.

For all combinations see wikipedia entry for yōon.

Hope that helps.


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## viajero_canjeado

Thanks for the helpful comments! I still have a tough time typing this stuff, though.. for example, if I want to type 學校，should I type gatsukou? Because when I type it, this is what I get: がつこう。It's still a big つ。 Or do you put an "l" for "little" before the "tsu"? がlつこう..... that doesn't seem to work well either. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

ps. I know the character for 學 is simplified in Japanese, it's just quicker for me to type Chinese because of things like little hiragana, so your help would be most appreciated.

pps. がっこう？　Is that it? You have to type "gakkou?"


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## viajero_canjeado

A couple more questions: how are you supposed to type *ねっ?  nee? netsu? ”nett” and then delete the extraneous "t"? Kind of complicated..
As for katagana, how do you type the ㄧ as in コㄧヒㄧ？"koohee"? I usually just resort to typing the Chinese 一，or hiragana "ichi", but that's kind of a hassle. Thanks for any help!*


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## Schokolade

As for がっこう、I type "gakkou". I think you can also type "galtukou" or "gaxtukou".

I'd type "neltu" or "nextu" to get ねっ.　Yeah I sometimes do that too, I delete an extra letter after typing like "netto".

As for コーヒー, I type "ko-hi-". The key for "-" is the one between "0(zero)" and "~", the one that you type with the shift key to get "=".


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## viajero_canjeado

Great, thanks Schokolade, that's super helpful~


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## lordfrikk

It obviously depends on the IME you are using, but I suppose it will be more or less the same. If you want to type a small hiragana/katakana character, just add "l" (little l) or "x" (little x) before the character when typing. You can type all small hiragana/katakana characters like that except for し. Even small hiragana vowels あ、う、え、い、お　which are not used like that AFAIK.


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## ShiroTheWise

Thank you so much! This was super useful. <3


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