Tsu (kana)

Tsu (つ in hiragana, ツ in katakana) is one of the Japanese kana, each representing one mora. Both represent the sound /tsɯ/. The shape of both hiragana and katakana originates from the kanji 川.

• Stroke Order: The hiragana つ is written in one stroke. The katakana ツ is written in three strokes.

• Usage: The kana つ is most commonly used alone to represent the /tsɯ/ sound. It is part of the series of kana that begin with the consonant t, which include ta, chi, tsu, te, and to. It can also appear in combinations with a smaller ya, yu, or yo (ゃ, ゅ, ょ) to represent sounds such as tya (ちゃ), tyu (ちゅ), and tyo (ちょ), although these are usually romanized with "ch" instead of "ts". Furthermore, the small tsu (っ in hiragana, ッ in katakana) is used as a sokuon, indicating a geminate consonant or a glottal stop depending on the following sound.

• Unicode: In Unicode, つ is encoded at U+3064, and ツ is encoded at U+30C4. Small versions are encoded at U+3063 (っ) and U+30C3 (ッ) respectively.

• Romanization: The standard romanization for both つ and ツ is "tsu".

• Historical Orthography: In historical kana orthography, there were some differences in the usage of certain kana. Modern usage is now standardized.