By now you know all ひらがな and カタカナ characters which effectively mean
you can read Japanese, but is this really the case? Actually,
before we can say that you are fully capable of knowing how to read
Japanese, there are a few little things you need to know.As it
turns out, you know every character but not every character
combination. Please don’t fret; there isn’t much to study however
practice in this case will eventually become perfection. You have
already been exposed to ちゃ and others before and perhaps you were
curious to know why small characters are used? Let’s explore this
further…
Contracted Sounds
Let’s first explore the concept of contracted sounds. When we
learned かさた they were “ka, sa, ta” and when we added a dakuten next
to them they became がざだ “ga, za, da”. With a minor alteration, we
changed the sound and what you are about to learn is a similar
concept and just as easy to remember.Let’s take two characters き
and やNow let’s put them side by side, they sound like “kiya” きやIf
we make the や small “kiya” becomes “kya” きゃThe chance in sound is
slightly different because we removed a vowel.
Not every character can support contracted sounds, rather only a
few of them can. Let’s go over them.Take any of the ~i sounds such
as き, し, ち, に, ひ, み, り and append either や, ゆ, or よ. Let’s look at
the following table to see them in full form.
～や
～ゆ
～よ
きゃ (kya)
きゅ(kyu)
きょ (kyo)
しゃ (sha)
しゅ (shu)
しょ (sho)
ちゃ (cha)
ちゅ (chu)
ちょ (cho)
にゃ (nya)
にゅ (nyu)
にょ (nyo)
ひゃ (hya)
ひゅ (hyu)
ひょ (hyo)
みゃ (mya)
みゅ (myu)
みょ (myo)
りゃ (rya)
りゅ (ryu)
りょ (ryo)
Incidentally, you may also apply Ten Ten to get new sounds but
using Ten Ten only applies to a select few. Let’s take a
look!
～や
～ゆ
～よ
きゃ (gya)
ぎゅ (gyu)
ぎょ (gyo)
じゃ (ja)
じゅ (ju)
じょ (jo)
びゃ (bya)
びゅ (byu)
びょ (byo)
And lastly we can also do the following and use handakuten...
～や
～ゆ
～よ
ぴゃ (pya)
ぴゅ(pyu)
ぴょ(pyo)
It will take some practice to familiarize oneself with these
but flash cards seem to be preferred among students. We have
omitted ぢゃ(ja)、ぢゅ(ju)、ぢょ(jo) because they are seldom ever used.
They can appear as furigana in very rare circumstances however we
are only mentioning this out of reference should you ever come to
see the time to use them.
Please
follow along with the following audio files:
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Alternatively you can download the audio files at the bottom of the
lesson (Under Lesson Homework / Extras)
Double Consonants
When the small っ is used, it denotes that it adds emphasis on the
following consonant effectively doubling the consonant. For
instance, you may want to write って (tte) and to do this you use the
small っ since the Japanese “alphabet” doesn’t contain singular
consonants but does support vowels.When you are drawing the small っ
make it 50% smaller than what you would normally write つ.
Example: つっ
Practice Makes Perfect!
It will take time to recognize and be able to write all of these
but if you remember the pattern and logic behind it, it shouldn’t
be too hard. Be sure to use the Jappleng pronunciation guide to
practice. There are no homework assignments for this lesson as you
are tasked to learn these contracted sounds and double consonants.
