Yōon — きゃ·きゅ·きょ

What You Will Learn in This Unit

You will be able to read and write yoon characters, which are い-row kana with small ゃ, ゅ, or ょ attached. Yoon are written with two characters but read as one mora. You will learn to distinguish large and small characters of the same shape, so that you can read words whose meaning changes depending on the length of the sound.

Yoon Are Formed by Attaching Small ゃ, ゅ, ょ to い-Row Kana

Yoon are written by attaching the small characters ゃ, ゅ, ょ to the い-row kana 「き·し·ち·に·ひ·み·り·ぎ·じ·び·ぴ」. The small character is written small at the lower right of the preceding character. Instead of the い sound of the preceding character, the vowel sound a, u, or o of や, ゆ, or よ follows the consonant. For example, きゃ is the consonant k followed by the vowel a, [kya], and the い sound of き (ki) is not pronounced.

The table below shows the results of attaching the three small characters to the eleven い-row kana.

For し·ち·じ, the romanized consonant changes to sh, ch, and j, so しゃ is written sha, ちゃ is written cha, and じゃ is written ja. The remaining characters keep their consonant spelling, so they are written as きゃ (kya) and にゃ (nya).

Yoon Are Read as One Mora

A mora is the unit used in Japanese to count the length of sounds. A yoon with a small character attached is counted as one mora even though it is written with two characters. Therefore きゃ is one mora. The same sound written with large characters, きや, consists of き and や, each counted as one mora, making two morae. The mora count of a word is found by counting each yoon as a single block.