Mini tsu's?

[MeitanteiJesus]

For example: カチッ

Dictionary says it represents a click / plock sound, but how is it read? Kachitsu? Or does it just stretch ee sound at the end?

I've also seen this in hiragana text, ex female scream: きゃあああぁぁっ, I'm guessing the mini a's just represent the sound fading away, but not sure on the tsu part again.

[TJack]

It's hard to explain it in writing, but what the small tsu's do is it creates a stop in the
sound. For some reason, I can't directly link a word from JDIC, but go to this site:

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi- ... dic.cgi?1C

And first copy this サッカー (Soccer) and listen to the sound, just click the blue arrow.

Then copy this さか　(slope, hill) and listen to the sound.

Notice there is a stop in サッカー between the sa and ka, while there isn't one in さか? That's the small tsu's job, to create a stop in between the two syllables.

Try ねっこ　and ねこ　for more listening practices so you cab hear the differece (I think the linguistic term is glottal stop)

[phreadom]

The way I learned it was to think of a word like "Bookkeeper". To think of the way you kind of stop in the middle there instead of just saying "bookeeper" all together. Not sure if that helps at all.

And I guess by extension from that a small っ at the end of a word would mean a sudden stop rather than trailing off?

[furrykef]

I'd say that it does represent an abrupt cut-off. It's used rather like an exclamation point (although you'll often see just っ　or an exclamation point, not necessarily both -- though both is certainly possible as well).

[Endo]

I wrote an article about mini っ and mini kana, maybe it can be of help.

http://chokochoko.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/issue-2-mini-日本語-easy/

[kurisuto]

Beware: the small tsu in サッカー for instance doesn't mark a glottal stop; it marks a geminate ("double") consonant.

For a technical explanation of the term "glottal stop": http://thejapanesepage.com/forum/viewto ... op#p161316

[MeitanteiJesus]

Thanks for the info on the glottal stop. So then in this instance:

軽く肩を回し、ずっと座りっぱなしで疲れた身体を解していると一人の男が俺の傍にやってきた。

っぱなし it just serves as a glottal stop for ぱなし?

Are there any rules towards when to use っ? If I was asked to generate this sentence from english, I wouldn't have known to place the tsu there.

Also, a few translation Q's about this sentence. This is what I currently think:

I lightly rotate my shoulder, my tired body from sitting all this time begins to relax and a man comes up beside me.

I was wondering how to determine which reading to use for some of the Kanji; is it karada or shintai? hotsu or kai?
At first I thought it was karada / hotsu, but furigana software puts it as shintai and kaishi.

[kurisuto]

っぱなし it just serves as a glottal stop for ぱなし?

No; here it marks a geminate consonant. Glottal stops in Japanese are primarily found at the end of sentences (or before a pause in some cases, for instance in quoted speech), or potentially at the beginning of a sentence when the first word starts with a vowel.

There are glottal stops in English too, but as in Japanese, they're not distinctive sounds. You can hear them, again as in Japanese, in some onomatopoeias like "uh-oh" (just before the "oh"; it somewhat resembles a very soft [h] sound).

Are there any rules towards when to use っ?

Well, as I said, in this instance there's no glottal stop; as for its actual use, it's primarily a way to express a strong emotion (surprise, anger for instance). As furrykef pointed out, it can be viewed as an exclamation point. An interesting use is when it replaces the "i" of an i-adjective (e.g すごっ), but I think this is mostly use by young females.

軽く肩を回し、ずっと座りっぱなしで疲れた身体を解していると一人の男が俺の傍にやってきた。

I lightly rotate my shoulder, my tired body from sitting all this time begins to relax and a man comes up beside me.

I was wondering how to determine which reading to use for some of the Kanji; is it karada or shintai? hotsu or kai?
At first I thought it was karada / hotsu, but furigana software puts it as shintai and kaishi.

Close! I would translate it to: "While I was lightly rotating my shoulders, trying to relax my tired body from all this time I was sitting, a man approached me." (I'm not sure it makes sense; I'm quite satisfied with my English but *everytime* I have to translate something I have some problems. So, to make sure you understand what I meant, it's something like: "I was sitting a long time, which caused my body to get tense, so I tried to relax and rotate my shoulders, when a man approached me")

As for the readings:
身体: I would say "karada", but it depends. You would usually use "shintai" in a more formal situation.
解す: as for this one, I'm really not sure; I think it would be "hogosu", but that's the first time I've seen it. The only reading that would match and that I knew is "kaisu", but I think it doesn't have this meaning of "relax".