13) Other useful things for Hiragana and Katakana

Question 1

Katakana Chōonpu

一

Answer 1

The chōonpu is usually used to indicate a long vowel sound in katakana writing and rarely in hiragana writing.
The symbol is sometimes used with hiragana, for example in the signs of ramen restaurants, which are sometimes written らーめん in hiragana. However, usually, hiragana does not use the chōonpu but another vowel kana to express this sound. The following table shows the usual hiragana equivalents used to form a long vowel, using the ha-gyō (the ha, hi, fu, he, ho sequence) as an example.
Romaji Hiragana Katakana
hā はあ ハー
hī ひい ヒー
fū / hū ふう フー
hē (hei) へい ヘー
hē (hee) へえ
hō (hou) ほう ホー
hō (hoo) ほお
When rendering foreign words into katakana, the chōonpu is often used to indicate a terminal “er”, such as the English word “number” which becomes ナンバー (nanbaa).

All long vowel sounds in Katakana are denoted by a dash. For example, “cute” would be written in Katakana like so: 「キュート」.

Question 2

For Hiragana: っ (Note, this a smaller Tsu, use this for comparison, つ っ)

For Katakana: ッ (Note, this a smaller Tsu, use this for comparison, ツ ッ)

Answer 2

These make a spoken consonant be pronounced for an audibly longer period of time. For example,
Pocky, a Japanese snack food, is written in kana as ポッキー, which is
ポ po
ッ (sokuon)
キ ki
ー (chōonpu)
In rōmaji, this is written pokkī, with the sokuon represented by the doubled k consonant.
There is also an expect when put together with Chi, for example,
こっち (kotchi), meaning “here”, is composed of:
こ ko
っ (sokuon)
ち chi
In the rōmaji rendering, kotchi, the sokuon is represented by the t consonant, even though the following consonant is ch. This is because rōmaji ch actually represents [t͡ɕ] (Voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate), and the sokuon before it doubles the [t] sound.

Question 3

Hiragana extension of vowel sounds

Answer 3

You can extend the vowel sound of a character by adding either 「あ」、「い」、or 「う」 depending on the vowel in accordance to the following chart.
Extending Vowel Sounds
Vowel Sound Extended by
/ a / あ
/ i / e / い
/ u / o / う
For example, if you wanted to create an extended vowel sound from 「か」, you would add 「あ」 to create 「かあ」. Other examples would include: 「き → きい」, 「く → くう」, 「け → けい」, 「こ → こう」, 「さ → さあ」 and so on.
There are rare exceptions where an / e / vowel sound is extended by adding 「え」 or an / o / vowel sound is extended by 「お」. Some examples of this include 「おねえさん」、「おおい」、and 「おおきい」. Pay careful attention to these exceptions but don’t worry, there aren’t too many of them.

Question 4

The ・symbol

Answer 4

Since Japanese doesn’t have any spaces, sometimes the symbol 「・」 is used to show the spaces like 「ロック・アンド・ロール」 for “rock and roll”. Using the symbol is completely optional so sometimes nothing will be used at all.