The is a Japanese symbol

Japanese typographic symbols

This page lists Japanese typographic symbols which are not included in kana or kanji.The links in the Unicode column lead to the Unihan database.-Repetition marks:-Brackets and quotation marks:-Phonetic marks:-Punctuation marks:...

 consisting of a small hiragana

Hiragana

is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...

 or katakana

Katakana

is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...

 tsu

Tsu (kana)

つ, in hiragana, or ツ in katakana, and the variant form ㋡, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. Both are phonemically although for phonological reasons, the actual pronunciation is...

. In less formal language it is called or , meaning "little tsu". Compare to a full-sized tsu:

	Full-sized	Sokuon
Hiragana	つ	っ
Katakana	ツ	ッ

The sokuon is used for various purposes. The main use is to mark a geminate consonant, which is represented in rōmaji (romanized Japanese) by the doubling of the consonant.

Examples:

• Pocky
  Pocky
  is a Japanese snack food produced by the Ezaki Glico Company of Japan.-History:Pocky was first sold in 1966, and consists of a biscuit stick coated with chocolate. It was named after the Japanese onomatopoetic word for the sound Pocky makes when bitten, pokkin . The original was followed by...
  
  , a Japanese snack food, is written in kana as ポッキー, which is

  ポ po

  ッ sokuon

  キ ki

  ー chōon

  Choon

  The , also known as ', ', or Katakana-Hiragana Prolonged Sound Mark by the Unicode Consortium, is a Japanese symbol which indicates a chōon, or a long vowel of two morae in length. Its form is a horizontal or vertical line in the center of the text with the width of one kanji or kana character...

  
  

  In rōmaji, this is written pokkī, with the sokuon represented by the doubled k consonant.

• 待って (matte), the te form of the verb 待つ (matsu, "wait"), is composed of:

  待 ma (kanji

  Kanji

  Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

  
  )

  っ sokuon

  て te

  In the rōmaji rendering, matte, the sokuon is represented by the doubling of the t consonant.

The sokuon cannot appear at the beginning of a word, before a vowel kana (a, i, u, e, or o), or before kana that begin with the consonants n, m, r, w, or y. In addition, it does not appear before voiced consonants (g, z, d, or b), or before h, except in loanwords, or distorted speech, or dialects.

The sokuon is also used at the end of a sentence, to indicate a glottal stop

Glottal stop

The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

 (a sharp or cut-off articulation), which may indicate angry or surprised speech.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet

International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...

, the sokuon is transcribed with either a colon-like length mark or a doubled consonant:

• kite (来て, "come") – /kite/
• kitte (切手, "postage stamp") – /kitːe/ or /kitte/
• asari (あさり, "clams") – /asaɽi/
• assari (あっさり, "easily") – /asːaɽi/ or /assaɽi/

In addition to Japanese, sokuon is used in Okinawan katakana orthographies. Ainu katakana uses a small ッ both for a final t-sound and to represent a sokuon.

Computer input

There are several methods of entering the sokuon using a computer or word-processor

Japanese input methods

Japanese input methods are the methods used to input Japanese characters on a computer.There are two main methods of inputting Japanese on computers. One is via a romanized version of Japanese called rōmaji , and the other is via keyboard keys corresponding to the Japanese kana...

, such as xtu, ltu, ltsu, etc. Some systems, such as Mac OS X's Kotoeri

Kotoeri

is a Japanese language input method that comes standard with Mac OS X and earlier versions of the Mac OS. Kotoeri literally means "word selection".-To convert kana to kanji in Mac OS X::...

 and the Microsoft IME, automatically generate a sokuon if an applicable consonant letter is typed twice; for example tta generates った.

See also

• Japanese phonology
  Japanese phonology
  This article deals with the phonology of the Japanese language.-Consonants:The Japanese vowels are pronounced as monophthongs, unlike in English; except for , they are similar to their Spanish or Italian counterparts....
  
  gives a detailed description of the sound system of Japanese.