Tsu (

hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...

: つ,

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 fr ...

: ツ) is one of the Japanese ''

kana are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , wh ...

'', each of which represents one mora. Both are phonemically , reflected in the

Nihon-shiki , romanized as in the system itself, is a romanization system for transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. Among the major romanization systems for Japanese, it is the most regular one and has an almost one-to-one rel ...

and

Kunrei-shiki , also known as the Monbusho system (named after the endonym for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) or MEXT system, is the Cabinet-ordered romanization system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Lat ...

Romanization tu, although for phonological reasons, the actual pronunciation is , reflected in the

Hepburn romanization is the main system of Romanization of Japanese, romanization for the Japanese language. The system was originally published in 1867 by American Christian missionary and physician James Curtis Hepburn as the standard in the first edition of h ...

tsu. The small ''kana'' っ/ッ, known as

sokuon The is a Japanese typographic symbols, Japanese symbol in the form of a small hiragana or katakana , as well as the various consonants represented by it. In less formal language, it is called or , meaning "small ". It serves multiple purposes ...

, are identical but somewhat smaller. They are mainly used to indicate consonant

gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

and commonly used at the end of lines of dialogue in fictional works as a symbol for a

glottal stop The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...

. The

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

forms づ, ヅ, usually pronounced the same as the dakuten forms of the su 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 ...

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

rendaku is a pronunciation change seen in some compound words in Japanese. When rendaku occurs, a voiceless consonant (such as ) is replaced with a voiced consonant (such as ) at the start of the second (or later) part of the compound. For example, t ...

), and they can never begin a word. 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 isola ...

, it can be written with a

handakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese language, Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a Mora (linguistics), mora should be pronounced Voice (phonetics), voiced, for instance, on sounds that ...

(which can be entered into a computer as either one character (ツ゚) or two combined characters (ツ゜) to represent the sound , which is interchangeable with the katakana ト゚. The katakana form has become popular as an

emoticon An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for emotion icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and Alphabet, letters—to express a person's feelings, mood ...

in the

Western world The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to various nations and state (polity), states in Western Europe, Northern America, and Australasia; with some debate as to whether those in Eastern Europe and Latin America also const ...

due to its resemblance to a smiling face and as part of a "

shrug A shrug is a gesture or List of human positions, posture performed by raising both shoulders. In certain countries, it is a representation of an individual either being indifferent about something or not knowing an answer to a question. Shrug ...

, known alternatively as Shruggie, rendered as: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . *ヅァ (dza), ヅェ (dze) and ヅォ (dzo) are used in

gairaigo is Japanese for "loan word", and indicates a transcription into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed in ancient times from Old or Middle Chinese (especially Literary Chine ...

s; these pronunciations are not same as ズァ (zwa), ズェ (zwe) and ズォ (zwo).

Stroke order

Other communicative representations

See also

References