っ,ッ
A ‘glottal stop’ is a sound produced by a momentary complete closure of the glottis, followed by a sudden release; for example ‘oh oh’. Small tsu っ (hiragana) or ッ (katakana) behaves as a glottal stop; so it effectively doubles the sound of the next consonant, e.g. だった (‘datta’ in Romaji). This common little っ takes anything up to one mora, depending on how much emphasis is used. This is also sometimes called the ‘double consonant marker’, although another glyph ん ’n’ is used in the case of な’na’ or ま‘ma’ kana column syllables.
You will notice a special gaigana symbol where っ or ッ arise which partly resembles the glottal stop as represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet. This helps preserve co linearity between our transliteration and the original kana. In normal Romaji, a double consonant is substituted, so っ could represent any number of ‘letters’.
ー
The cho’uon (long sound) is used predominantly in katakana to indicate a lengthened vowel sound. While っ precedes the glyph it accents, ー follows the vowel it lengthens (remember this ー is drawn upright in vertical text).
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