Quote:
Originally Posted by mira
It is a sound but it is the sound of whichever character follows it. The small pause itself IS silent but the small is not because it just duplicates whichever sound comes after. I was trying to describe it to make sense.
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Actually, I think the っ is called a '
glottal stop' (I'm 95% sure that's the right term. Regardless of whether I have the right term or not, the rest of my definition should be pretty sound) It's usually taught as doubling whatever sound follows it because that's what it does in romaji (けっこう = kekkou. Double the K). It's real function is to textually signal a stop in the flow of air when you're speaking. So if you saw one at the end of a phrase, for example, then that would be like an abrupt cutting off of a sound. For a really easy example: なッ...何?! 'Wh-... What?'. (I'm not sure if the っ should be hiragana or katakana, or if it matters at all.)