ち, in

hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...

, or チ in

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

, is one of the Japanese

kana The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most p ...

, which each represent one mora. 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 The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing). The , ...

forms ぢ, ヂ, pronounced the same as the dakuten forms of the shi kana in most dialects (see

yotsugana are a set of four specific kana, じ, ぢ, ず, づ (in the Nihon-shiki romanization system: ''zi'', ''di'', ''zu'', ''du''), used in the Japanese writing system. They historically represented four distinct voiced morae (syllables) in t ...

), are uncommon. They are primarily used for indicating a voiced consonant in the middle of a compound word (see

rendaku is a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of a non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word. In modern Japanese, ''rendaku'' is common but at times unpredictable, with certain words un ...

), 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 Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...

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, 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