All the Small Kana

Kana come in two sizes, and the difference is not decorative. A handful of characters — ゃ, ゅ, ょ, っ, ぁ, ぃ, ぅ, ぇ, ぉ, plus the katakana-only ヮ and ヶ — are written at roughly half size and tucked into the corner of their square. These are the small kana (小書き仮名, こがきがな kogaki-gana; an older name is 捨て仮名, すてがな sutegana). Writing one full-size, or full-size where it should be small, does not just look wrong — it produces a different word. This page gathers every small kana in one place so you can see that they are a single, elegant mechanism doing several different jobs.

What "small" actually means

A normal kana is one full mora (one beat of Japanese timing) and stands on its own. A small kana behaves differently: with the exception of the small っ, it does not get its own beat — it fuses with the character before it to spell a sound the basic 46-kana grid cannot write by itself. Physically, a small kana is reduced to about half size and sits in the lower-left of the cell in horizontal writing (and the upper-right in vertical writing). That position and size are the only visual cue that separates きょ from きよ, so they carry real information.

病院 (びょういん byōin, "hospital") and 美容院 (びよういん biyōin, "beauty salon") differ by exactly one thing: the ょ in the first is small, the よ in the second is full. Mis-size it and you send someone to the wrong building.

The full inventory

Small ゃ ゅ ょ — the yōon

The most common small kana are ゃ, ゅ, ょ. They attach to an i-column kana (き, し, ち, に, ひ, み, り, ぎ, じ, び, ぴ) and palatalize it — glide it toward a y. き + small ゃ = きゃ (kya), し + small ゅ = しゅ (shu), ち + small ょ = ちょ (cho). The pair spells one mora, not two. This is how Japanese writes the kya/sho/nyu sounds that its base grid otherwise cannot reach.

The size difference is meaning-bearing. きょう (kyō, "today," two moras) versus きよう (kiyō, 器用 "dexterous," three moras); じゅう (jū, "ten") versus じゆう (jiyū, 自由 "freedom"). In each pair the only change is whether the second kana is small or full. For the complete palatalization chart, see the yōon combined kana page.

Small っ — the sokuon

The small っ is the odd one out: it does take a full beat, but a silent one. It doubles the consonant that follows and inserts a one-mora held pause before it. まつ (matsu, "to wait") and まって (matte, "wait!") are two different words, separated only by that little っ.

学校 (がっこう gakkō) is four beats — が・っ・こ・う — with the っ held as silence before the k releases. Write that っ full-size and you get がつこう (gatsukou), which is not a word. The sokuon has its own full page: the small っ and geminate consonants.

Small ぁ ぃ ぅ ぇ ぉ — the small vowels

The five small vowels do most of their work in katakana, where they let Japanese spell foreign sounds the native syllabary never had. A consonant kana plus a small vowel builds a new mora: フ + ァ = ファ (fa), テ + ィ = ティ (ti), ウ + ェ = ウェ (we), チ + ェ = チェ (che), フ + ォ = フォ (fo), デ + ィ = ディ (di).

パーティー (pātī, "party") packs two writing-system tricks into four characters: the small ィ makes ティ (ti), and the ー is the long-vowel bar. For the full set of these extended syllables, see katakana for foreign sounds.

In hiragana, small vowels are rare. You meet them mainly in stylized, drawn-out casual writing — ちっちゃぃ (chitchai, "teeny"), すごぉい (sugōi, "sooo cool") — and a few dialect spellings. These are (informal) effects for texting and manga, not standard spelling.

The katakana oddities: ヮ and ヶ

Two small forms exist only in katakana and are easy to misread.

ヮ (small wa) appears in the digraph クヮ (kwa) and グヮ (gwa), which spell a kw- sound found in old readings, some dialects (notably Okinawan and older Kyoto speech), and Ainu transcription. In standard modern Japanese it is (archaic) — 火事 was once written くゎじ, now simply かじ (kaji). You should recognize ヮ but will almost never write it.

ヶ looks like a miniature katakana ケ, but here is the surprise: it is not katakana at all, and it is never read "ke." It reads ka in counters and ga in place names.

三ヶ月 is sankagetsu ("three months"); 霞ヶ関 is Kasumigaseki. Why "ka" and "ga" and never "ke"? Because ヶ is a shrunken form of the kanji 箇 — a fact almost every textbook omits. The full explanation, along with the kanji-repeat mark 々 and the wave dash 〜, lives on the iteration marks and special symbols page.

One mechanism, several jobs

Step back and you can see the whole logic. The base kana grid was built for the roughly 46 consonant-plus-vowel syllables of older Japanese. It could not, on its own, write a palatalized kya, a doubled kk, or a foreign fa. Rather than invent dozens of new letters, Japanese reused the letters it already had and simply shrank them: a small ょ palatalizes, a small っ geminates, a small ァ imports a foreign vowel, a small ヶ marks a counter. One visual move — reduce the character — stretches a closed syllabary far beyond its original inventory. That single insight ties together every character on this page.

Write it small — really small

Because size is the whole distinction, handwriting and typing both demand care.

• By hand, draw a small kana at about half height and set it low and left (in horizontal text). A ょ that drifts up to full size turns きょう into きよう.
• When typing, the IME produces the small form automatically as part of a syllable — you type kyou and get きょう, matte and get まって. To force a standalone small kana, type x or l before it: xya → ゃ, xtu → っ, xa → ぁ. See typing Japanese with an IME.

Common mistakes

The single error that unites all of these is treating small size as optional. English has nothing like it — we never shrink a letter to change a word — so the instinct is to write every kana the same size. Train yourself to see, and to write, the difference.

Key takeaways

• Small kana are distinct written forms, not smaller versions of the same character; size changes the word.
• ゃ ゅ ょ palatalize the preceding kana into one mora (きょう ≠ きよう).
• っ doubles the following consonant and holds a silent beat (まって ≠ まつ).
• ぁ ぃ ぅ ぇ ぉ build foreign syllables in katakana (ファ, ティ, チェ) and stylized speech in hiragana (informal).
• ヮ is (archaic) (クヮ kwa); ヶ reads ka/ga, never ke, because it is really the kanji 箇.
• Write them small and low; type x/l before a kana to force a standalone small form.