Tsu (kana)

Tsu (hiragana: つ, katakana: 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 [tsɯ] (listen).

tsu
hiragana katakana
transliteration	tsu, tu
translit. with dakuten	zu, dzu, du
hiragana origin	川
katakana origin	川
Man'yōgana	都 豆 通 追 川 津
Voiced Man'yōgana	豆 頭 弩
spelling kana	つるかめのツ (Tsurukame no "tsu")
unicode	U+3064, U+30C4
braille

The small kana っ/ッ, known as sokuon, are identical but somewhat smaller. They are mainly used to indicate consonant gemination and commonly used at the end of lines of dialogue in fictional works as a symbol for a glottal stop.

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 has become popular as an emoticon in the Western world due to its resemblance to a smiling face and as part of a "shrug" emoticon, rendered as:  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .[1][2]

Forms	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal ts- (た行 ta-gyō)	tsu	つ	ツ
	tsuu tsū	つう, つぅ つー	ツウ, ツゥ ツー
Addition dakuten d/z- (だ行 da-gyō)	du, zu, dzu	づ	ヅ
	duu, zuu dzuu, dū zū, dzū	づう, づぅ づー	ヅウ, ヅゥ ヅー

Other additional forms
Form A (ts-) Romaji Hiragana Katakana tsa つぁ ツァ tsi つぃ ツィ tsu つ ツ tse つぇ ツェ tso つぉ ツォ tsyu つゅ ツュ	Form B (zw-) Romaji Hiragana Katakana zwa づぁ ヅァ zwi づぃ ヅィ dzu づ ヅ zwe づぇ ヅェ zwo づぉ ヅォ

• ヅァ, ヅェ and ヅォ are used in gairaigos, these pronunciations are not same as ズァ (zwa), ズェ (zwe) and ズォ (zwo).

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing つ

Stroke order in writing ツ

Stroke order in writing つ

Stroke order in writing ツ

Other communicative representations

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
つるかめのツ Tsurukame no "Tsu"	▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-1345 Japanese Braille

• Full Braille representation

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 つ
					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

• Computer encodings

Character information

Preview	つ		ツ		ﾂ		っ		ッ
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER TU		KATAKANA LETTER TU		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER TU		HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL TU		KATAKANA LETTER SMALL TU
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	12388	U+3064	12484	U+30C4	65410	U+FF82	12387	U+3063	12483	U+30C3
UTF-8	227 129 164	E3 81 A4	227 131 132	E3 83 84	239 190 130	EF BE 82	227 129 163	E3 81 A3	227 131 131	E3 83 83
GB 18030	164 196	A4 C4	165 196	A5 C4	132 49 153 48	84 31 99 30	164 195	A4 C3	165 195	A5 C3
Numeric character reference	つ	つ	ツ	ツ	ﾂ	ﾂ	っ	っ	ッ	ッ
Shift JIS[3]	130 194	82 C2	131 99	83 63	194	C2	130 193	82 C1	131 98	83 62
EUC-JP[4]	164 196	A4 C4	165 196	A5 C4	142 194	8E C2	164 195	A4 C3	165 195	A5 C3
EUC-KR[5] / UHC[6]	170 196	AA C4	171 196	AB C4			170 195	AA C3	171 195	AB C3
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[7]	198 200	C6 C8	199 92	C7 5C			198 199	C6 C7	199 91	C7 5B
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[8]	199 75	C7 4B	199 192	C7 C0			199 74	C7 4A	199 191	C7 BF

Character information

Preview	ｯ		づ		ヅ		ツ゚		㋡
Unicode name	HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER SMALL TU		HIRAGANA LETTER DU		KATAKANA LETTER DU		KATAKANA LETTER AINU TU[9]		CIRCLED KATAKANA TU
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	65391	U+FF6F	12389	U+3065	12485	U+30C5	12484 12442	U+30C4+309A	13025	U+32E1
UTF-8	239 189 175	EF BD AF	227 129 165	E3 81 A5	227 131 133	E3 83 85	227 131 132 227 130 154	E3 83 84 E3 82 9A	227 139 161	E3 8B A1
GB 18030	132 49 151 49	84 31 97 31	164 197	A4 C5	165 197	A5 C5	165 196 129 57 167 50	A5 C4 81 39 A7 32	129 57 211 51	81 39 D3 33
Numeric character reference	ｯ	ｯ	づ	づ	ヅ	ヅ	ツ゚	ツ゚	㋡	㋡
Shift JIS (plain)[3]	175	AF	130 195	82 C3	131 100	83 64
Shift JIS-2004[10]	175	AF	130 195	82 C3	131 100	83 64	131 157	83 9D
EUC-JP (plain)[4]	142 175	8E AF	164 197	A4 C5	165 197	A5 C5
EUC-JIS-2004[11]	142 175	8E AF	164 197	A4 C5	165 197	A5 C5	165 253	A5 FD
EUC-KR[5] / UHC[6]			170 197	AA C5	171 197	AB C5
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[7]			198 201	C6 C9	199 93	C7 5D
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[8]			199 76	C7 4C	199 193	C7 C1

See also

• Sokuon
• Dakuten and Handakuten
• Kanji
• Chōonpu

References

1. "🤷 Shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Emoji". emojipedia.org.
2. "The Best Way to Type ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". The Atlantic. 2014-05-21. Retrieved 2019-06-17.
3. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
4. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
5. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
6. Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
7. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
8. van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.
9. Unicode Consortium. "Unicode Named Character Sequences". Unicode Character Database.
10. Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "Shift_JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 1) vs Unicode mapping table".
11. Project X0213 (2009-05-03). "EUC-JIS-2004 (JIS X 0213:2004 Appendix 3) vs Unicode mapping table".