ち, in

hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...

, or チ in

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...

, is one of the Japanese

kana are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , wh ...

, which each represent one mora. Both are phonemically , reflected in the

Nihon-shiki , romanized as in the system itself, is a romanization system for transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. Among the major romanization systems for Japanese, it is the most regular one and has an almost one-to-one rel ...

and

Kunrei-shiki , also known as the Monbusho system (named after the endonym for the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) or MEXT system, is the Cabinet-ordered romanization system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Lat ...

romanization ti, although, for phonological reasons, the actual pronunciation is , which is reflected in the

Hepburn romanization is the main system of Romanization of Japanese, romanization for the Japanese language. The system was originally published in 1867 by American Christian missionary and physician James Curtis Hepburn as the standard in the first edition of h ...

chi. The kanji for one thousand (千, ''sen''), appears similar to チ, and at one time they were related, but today チ is used as phonetic, while the kanji carries an entirely unrelated meaning. Many onomatopoeic words beginning with ち pertain to things that are small or quick.Hiroko Fukuda, ''Jazz Up Your Japanese with Onomatopoeia: For All Levels'', trans. Tom Gally. New York: Kodansha International (2003): 19 - 20, Introduction, Words Beginning with ち Chi, Indicating Smallness or Quickness. The

dakuten The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a mora should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing). The , coll ...

forms ぢ, ヂ, are uncommon. They are primarily used for indicating a voiced consonant in the middle of a compound word (see

rendaku is a pronunciation change seen in some compound words in Japanese. When rendaku occurs, a voiceless consonant (such as ) is replaced with a voiced consonant (such as ) at the start of the second (or later) part of the compound. For example, t ...

), and they don't usually begin a word. The dakuten form of the shi character is sometimes used when transliterating "di", as opposed to チ's dakuten form; for example, ''Aladdin'' is written as アラジン ''Arajin'', and radio is written as ラジオ. It is, however, more common to use ディ instead, such as ディオン to translate the name ''Dion''. In the

Ainu language Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu (), is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isola ...

, チ by itself is pronounced , and can be combined with the katakana ヤ, ユ, エ, and ヨ to write the other sounds. The combination チェ (pronounced ), is interchangeable with セ゚.

Stroke order

Other communicative representations

See also

References