14 CHAPTER 1. THE SYNTAX
kana pronunciation glide pronunciation
+ ki + ya kya
+ shi + yu shu
+ chi + yo cho
+ mi + ya mya
+ hi + yo hyo
+ ni + yu nyu
+ ri + yo ryoWhile a wriĴen combination of two syllables, the glide it represents
is only a single ”drum beat” long, just as the regular syllables. Thus, the
words is three beats long: spelled out, it will be pronounced ,
and.
Finally, the last feature of spoken Japanese reflected in writing is
what is known as the ”double consonant”: a reasonably recent change to
the way Japanese is wriĴen that indicates that a particular consonant has
a short pause before it is actually pronounced. This consonant doubling is
found in a number of western languages as well, such as in Italian, where
words like ’tuĴi’ have a wriĴen double consonant while in terms of pro-
nunciation there is simply a pause before the consonant. In Japanese, be-
cause there are no actual ’loose’ consonants, the doubling is represented
by a special character: a (or ) wriĴen either half height (in horizontal
writing) or half width (in vertical writing) to indicate the pause. To illus-
trate the difference between this small / and the regular form, a few
example words:
small pronunciation meaning
”hakka” ignition
”shikke” upbringing
”makka” intensely rednormal pronunciation meaning
”hatsuka” 20 days/20th day
”shitsuke” humidity
”matsuka” the ’Pine’ family of treesThis ” / as a pause” is also applied when agloĴal stopis needed
in for instance an exclamation, ” !”, which is an exclamation with a ”cut
off” rather than long vowel sound.