I thought I had Wanikani’s IME mastered, but I just hit the lesson for Eiffel Tower, and with it, something I’d never seen before, a small ぇ. I tried everything I could think of, but couldn’t figure out how to type it, and Wanikani’s own guide is silent on the matter. I had to copy-paste the answer from the lesson into the answer field just to pass it, and that obviously isn’t a sustainable solution.
Type x before the vowel to get a small vowel.
5 Likes
Thanks! I wish they’d include this in their typing guide.
Well you don’t have to do that for that lesson. Just type fe and the IME translates it to ふぇfor you automatically.
3 Likes
I’d be nice if they mentioned that as well.
Edit: I found it hidden on this page. Why don’t they include it in the main guide? I guess maybe they thought it’d be too long if they included everything.
Typing “efferutou” while your IME is running will get you the same result (えっふぇるとう).
Whenever a characters consonant is inputted twice, a small っ is created to reflect this. I find this this slightly easier when I want to insert a small っ into the middle of a word, rather than using x + tsu, then the next desired character.
ffu > っふ
ffe > っふぇ
kki > っき
kkyu > っきゅ
And also totalty unrelated but, there are quite alot of little shortcuts you can make with other characters, for instance.
tsu > つ
tu > つchi > ち
ti > ちshi > し
si > し
9 Likes
I never thought about it, but those “short cuts” are romaji spellings I’ve seen in my own language, Swedish. It completely threw me off and I can’t say I’ve used that dictionary much because of it. 
So, it makes a lot of sense that typing tu gets you つ as tu is the alternative romaji spelling for tsu. The same is true of the others.
It’s consistent with the spelling of the other kana in the same column:
さsa たta はha ざza だda
しsi ちti ひhi じzi ぢdi
すsu つtu ふhu ずzu づdu
せse てte へhe ぜze でde
そso とto ほho ぞzo どdo
It’s all very logical.
2 Likes
It’s logical for sure.
But when I first encountered it, it was in that Japanese-Swedish dictionary (well going both ways). And from a pronunciation perspective “shi” is intuitively pronounced the correct way in Swedish, while “si” is a complete mystery! Same goes for “tu”, while “tsu” is self-explanatory. And di and ti makes even less sense.
So, yeah, I was very confused by that romaji spelling as it made no sense as a way to describe pronunciation from a Swedish perspective, when there existed other ways to romanize Japanese that are much more straightforward (thus more pedagogical imo 
).
1 Like
Yeah, I guess from a pronunciation perspective it’s not so good, but it makes sense from a typing perspective, which is why Japanese people tend to use this one, even in romaji, I guess. It’s what they’re taught in school, I think?
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.