How to use and type small hiragana and katakana

Have you ever tried to write the small hiragana or katakana and couldn’t? For some, even writing the correct syllable, no option with small hiragana appears. In this article, I will help you learn once and for all how to write these small hiragana on any computer or mobile phone.

We rarely use these small kana, the most used of them is the tsu (つ /っッ) which can easily appear when typing two consonants together like “tt” and “ss”. The small tsu is called Sokuon (促音) which indicates a doubled sound of a consonant or a pause or cut in pronunciation.

This small tsu can be present both in hiragana and in katakana words like Football which in Japanese can be called futtebooru [フットボール] or sakkaa [サッカー].

Other small katakana and hiragana that we use a lot are (ゃゅょ) which are usually used to combine a consonant with the sounds ya yu yo. By using these small kana you can form sounds like ちゃ (cha), ピュ (pyu), びょ(byo), きゅ(kyu) and others. To type them, just write the letters to form the syllable.

How to Use and type the small ぁぃぇぉ

Other small kana that are not usually used are the sounds ぁぃぇぉ. They used to be used in syllables like wi (うぃ), we (ウェ), vi (ヴィ), ve (ヴェ), je (じぇ), fa (ファ) and others. Currently, most of these syllables can be written more simply like vi (ヴィ) can write bi (び). If you want to write these small hiragana or katakana, you can type things like va, vi, ve and vo.

There is a simple way to write any small hiragana or katakana in isolation. To do this, just type the X before the kana you want to write small. Another alternative is to type the 1, but it does not work on all devices.

It is worth remembering that the syllables wi and we have their own kana that have become obsolete. If you write currently it will be ウィ and ウェ, but if you navigate with the arrow through the other options and writing suggestions you will find the hiragana ゐ and ゑ.

Unfortunately, only the kana アイウエオあいうえどうつやゆよ can be small. I hope you liked these little tips. We appreciate the comments and shares. We also recommend reading:

• Dakuten and handakuten – Quotation Marks in Japanese
• Rōmaji – The romanization of the Japanese Language
• KANJI or HIRAGANA – How to know which to use?
• Can ん(N) start a Japanese sentence?