Gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it. In Japanese this is marked by a small つ.
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How did “little tsu” become a lengthener?
How did it come about historically that っ preceding a sound would geminate it? Is it really a little つ or are they just near homomorphs?
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What does the little っ (tsu) signify when at the end of a word?
The small っ (tsu) is usually used before a consonant to indicate gemination, less technically known as doubled consonants, which is how they are transliterated in romaji.
I have seen it at the end of ...
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Repeating the vowel sound of the mora that precedes gemination in songs
I noticed in songs, the vowel sounds of the morae that come before geminations are sometimes repeated.
For example, the first lyric line of “マジカルちょーだいっ” is sung as しらんぷりをしたあって where the line is ...
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Are there many words that have the same pronunciation ambiguity as Nihon/Nippon?
Wikipedia says that 日本 can be pronounced either [にっぽん]{nippon} or [にほん]{nihon}.
Does this ambiguity in pronunciation happen with other words? If so, does it only happen with words that originated ...