Small Hiragana words

[Ben W Bell]

Learning through my hiragana I have a query.

しや is transliterated in Hepburn to sha (being composed of shi and ya). Fine this is acceptable. However how then do you write words that have the shi and ya in them separately in Hiragana? Words like かしや (kashiya - sweet shop), Under the small Hiragana system this would be kasha. Or am I making a deal out of nothing and once I get into Katakana and kanji this will all disappear?

[Index]

You've got to use the small や、ゆ and よ。
しや is actually shiya. Sha is しゃ。
かしや　is infact kashiya. Kasha would be　かしゃ.

[Ben W Bell]

Gosh, you're right. Darn small fonts on my printouts. Yes, I'd never twigged that they were actually smaller in size. Dear knows what I thought it meant by small then. Yes thank you for clearing that up.

[TwistedMac]

That stuff is called yoo-on (or compound syllables).. it's a bit tricky for us beginners...

It's made up of a syllable from the い Dan and one from the や Gyo (which is small.)

that's basically it though :P All you need to know about yoo-on :P

[Glenn]

Note that if you're reading old Japanese (pre-WWII literature), there will be no distinction between しや and しゃ, or even かつて and かって. There were also some other seemingly strange conventions, but I'll leave those for now. I'm just throwing this out there for your information, by the way. I doubt you'll have to worry about this much.