ち, in hiragana, or チ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one

mora Mora may refer to: People * Mora (surname) Places Sweden * Mora, Säter, Sweden * Mora, Sweden, the seat of Mora Municipality * Mora Municipality, Sweden United States * Mora, Louisiana, an unincorporated community * Mora, Minnesota, a city * M ...

. Both are phonemically , although, for phonological reasons, the actual pronunciation is . The kanji for one thousand (千, ''sen''), appears similar to チ, and at one time they were related, but today チ is used as phonetic, while the kanji carries an entirely unrelated meaning. Many onomatopoeic words beginning with ち pertain to things that are small or quick.Hiroko Fukuda, ''Jazz Up Your Japanese with Onomatopoeia: For All Levels'', trans. Tom Gally. New York: Kodansha International (2003): 19 - 20, Introduction, Words Beginning with ち Chi, Indicating Smallness or Quickness. The dakuten forms ぢ, ヂ, pronounced the same as the dakuten forms of the shi kana in most dialects (see yotsugana), are uncommon. They are primarily used for indicating a voiced consonant in the middle of a compound word (see rendaku), and they can never begin a word, although some people will write the word for hemorrhoids (normally じ) as ぢ for emphasis. The dakuten form of the shi character is sometimes used when transliterating "di", as opposed to チ's dakuten form; for example, ''Aladdin'' is written as アラジン ''Arajin'', and radio is written as ラジオ. More common, though, is to use ディ instead, such as ディオン to translate the name ''Dion''. In the

Ainu language Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu, is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isolate ...

, チ by itself is pronounced , and can be combined with the katakana ヤ, ユ, エ, and ヨ to write the other sounds as well as sounds. The combination チェ (pronounced ), is interchangeable with セ゚.

Stroke order

Other communicative representations

See also

References