Postby thegooseking » March 1st, 2014 5:29 pm
Duffyさん、マイケルさん、
マイケルさん's explanation was perfectly good, but I just want to add my own take on it.
With 'hard' consonants, what I do is I move my mouth into the shape of the consonant, but then pause before pronouncing it. You can imagine it like firing a bow and arrow: moving your mouth into the position is like nocking the arrow, pausing is like drawing back the string, and finally pronouncing it is like releasing. This makes the consonant, like an arrow, come out a bit more forcefully.
Of course, as マイケルさん says, things like 's' are different.
Occasionally a small 'tsu' will become a regular 'tsu'. You can see this, for example, in the compound kanji 仏陀 ('Buddha'). This is pronounced ぶっだ (BU-DDA), with a small 'tsu', but 仏 on its own is pronounced ぶつ (BU-TSU), where the 'tsu' is all grown up. This is really just a point of trivia at the moment, though. You don't have to worry about it until you're well into working with kanji.
