Tsu (kana)

tsu
Hiragana Katakana
Transliteration	tsu, tu
with dakuten	zu, dzu, du
Hiragana origin	川
Katakana origin	川
Spelling kana	つるかめのツ (Tsurukame no "tsu")
Morse code	・－－・
Braille
Unicode	U+3064, U+30C4
Semaphore
kana gojūon
wa ra ya ma ha na ta sa ka a wi ri mi hi ni chi shi ki i n ru yu mu fu nu tsu su ku u we re me he ne te se ke e wo ro yo mo ho no to so ko o
sokuon dakuten chōonpu

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 /tu͍/ although for phonological reasons, the actual pronunciation is [t͡su͍] ( listen).

The sokuon, which are used mainly to indicate consonant gemination, are identical but somewhat smaller.

The dakuten forms づ, ヅ, pronounced the same as the dakuten forms of the su kana in most dialects (see yotsugana), are uncommon. They are primarily used for indicating a voiced consonant in the middle of a compound word (see rendaku), and they can never begin a word.

In the Ainu language, it can be written with a handakuten (which can be entered into a computer as either one character (ツ゚) or two combined characters (ツ゜) to represent the sound [tu͍], which is interchangeable with the katakana ト゚.

The katakana form is becoming increasingly popular as an emoticon in the Western world due to its resemblance to a smiling face.^{[citation needed]}

Other Representations

• Computer encodings

つ / ツ in Japanese Braille
っ / ッ sokuon	つ / ツ tsu	づ / ヅ zu/du	つう / ツー tsū	づう / ヅー zū/dū	Other kana based on Braille か
					ちゅ / チュ chu	ぢゅ / ヂュ ju/dyu	ちゅう / チュー chū	ぢゅう / ヂュー jū/dyū

See also

• Small tsu

External links

Look up つ, づ, ツ, or ヅ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.