why do i often see the character "tsu" as furigana but it is not actually pronounced ?
like for example i take an anime episode titled :
たいせんあいてけつてい 対戦相手決定
はやくやろうろぜいつかいせん 早くやろうぜ 一回戦
why is that written "ketsutei" when pronounced "ketei" or why is that pronounced "ikaisen" instead of "itsukaisen" or "ichikaisen" or itskaisen" ??
i am getting familiar with katakana and hiragana, i somehow understood dakuten and handakuten, but sometimes i m not quite following the furigana logic, is there something i m missing ?
Rufas2008-08-10T07:06:25Z
Favorite Answer
You had misidentify the "tsu" as a full-sized character, when it should be smaller, which is a Sokuon.
The sokuon is used for various purposes. The main use is for showing a geminate consonant, which is represented in rōmaji by the "doubling" of the following consonant.
Example: けってい = 決定
け ke っ sokuon て te, with the sokuon representing the doubling of the t consonant. い i
You can read more about it here: http://www.sljfaq.org/w/sokuon
TSU (ã¤) is not a double "constant"! The function of tsu(ã¤) in this case, just doubles the first "consonant" of the next syllable / word.
"ketsutei" is wrong: it's ãã¤ã¦ã or ke+ã¤+te+i so, the t of tei gets doubled: kettei "itsukaisen" is wrong: it's ãã¤ãããã or i+ã¤+ka+i+se+n, so the k of kaisen gets doubled: ikkaisen
Note: constant = something that never changes, that is it stays the same.
consonant = something in an alphabet which is not defined as a vowel.