Question about word oozappa おおざっぱ

Why is there a tsu looking thing in the furigana if it is a p?

Do you mean the small っ in between the ざ and ぱ? That marks a glottal stop and serves to double the consonant of the kana that follows it. That’s why in romaji it’s written with a double ‘p’ (and typed with one when using romaji input)

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Wow, do you also happen to know why in Japanese party is spelled pati? Even though there’s a te.

It’s written パーティー . Here the small-イ modifies the sound of the kana before it, and means that ティ is pronounced “ti”. This is a (comparatively) modern development in kana spelling to represent loanwords like this a bit more accurately – “ti” is not a sound you get in native Japanese words. The kana spelling with a small-kana is the same pattern you get with きゃ きゅ きょ etc where the small kana combines with the preceding large kana to represent a single sound.

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There’s a list of the other oddball katakana syllables in the “Combination Katakana” section of the Tofugu page on learning katakana, by the way. Some of them are more common than others.

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In Hepburn romanization, it is paatii; but there are variations.

In Wāpuro rōmaji, it is pa-thi-. Also with variations.

There are different ways to write Japanese with alphabets, but the modified Hepburn one maps closer to English pronunciation, but not necessarily how it is actually typed.

How to type is that Wāpuro rōmaji, but there still sometimes more than one way to type (e.g. pa-texi-).

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But not necessarily how it is actually pronounced. :slightly_smiling_face:

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