I mean, yeah, side by side, I can see the difference.
シ is more horizontal and　ツ is more vertical.

But when you're trying to read a sign and you see a character that resembles both of them, it's really tough. Is it just a "you should just know the whole word so it'll naturally make sense" kind of thing, or am I just terrible at katakana? I mean, I've been studying in high school and middle school classes for 4 or 5 years now so you'd think I'd at least have my hiragana and katakana down (Despite the low quality of the teaching), but I always stumble when I run into these.

For instance, someone linked like a social networking site for Japan and the topbar said

ソーシャル　ネットワーキング　サービス

I recognized the second two words because I've ran into them before and I could just sound them out anyway to find the english equivalent (yes bad habits I know, but what's a learner to do). サービス　is all over the place and ネットワーキング is fairly obvious.

However, ソーシャル took me at least a minute or two to figure out what the hell I was reading. I mean, come on, it's one word, and it even was separated by spaces to make it clear that it was one word, and I couldn't read it because it looked like sootsaru!

我慢

You'll get used to it with more practice. It might be helpful to compare the katakana form to the corresponding hiragana forms. I.e.

つ　ツ

し　シ

If you trace a line in your mind through the two katakana dots, you can see that it has the same shape as the corresponding hiragana character.

I was wondering the same thing a few months ago. I know it's horrid advice, but you will eventually be able to tell the difference fine, and even if you don't, the word will make it obvious 90% of the time.

Edit: Seeing any combo, generally, of シャ、シュ、ショ should help clue you in that it's シ and not ツ. Maybe I'm stupid but I don't think ツャ、ツュ、ツョ with ツ even exist?

Both are crooked smiles. Write them both out several (hundred) times using the correct stroke order. You'll notice the subtle differences a lot better this way.

SHI



TSU


Another thing you'll notice is that the two dashes are usually exaggerated when you see them. What I mean is, the two dashes in SHI will usually be completely horizontal while the dashes in TSU will be almost vertical.

The SHI and SO at the bottom of this picture are good example of what I mean.

ソウルシルバー



The TSU in the picture below is what you will often see.

ツール

shang Wrote:You'll get used to it with more practice. It might be helpful to compare the katakana form to the corresponding hiragana forms. I.e.

つ　ツ

し　シ

If you trace a line in your mind through the two katakana dots, you can see that it has the same shape as the corresponding hiragana character.

This.

The two katakana characters were confusing when i was first shown them, but as soon as the correspondence with the hiragana characters was pointed out, i never confused them again.

My favorite katakana word: シンプソンズ (just missing a ツ)

Quote:Another thing you'll notice is that the two dashes are usually exaggerated when you see them. What I mean is, the two dashes in SHI will usually be completely horizontal while the dashes in TSU will be almost vertical.

This.

To be honest, I never even noticed the correlation to Hiragana until I read about it just now.

Of course, It also helps that my name begins with シ

I recommend you look carefully at the stroke order.

シ is basically top to bottom
ツ is basically left to right

As a result they look nothing alike in handwritten form. I find my シ is more easily confused with ミ than with ツ, but then I probably just have bad handwriting :-)

Hope this helps,

C.J.

シ (shi), ン (n), ツ (tsu), (ソ) so, and ノ (no)

These characters can be grouped into two separate categories. The シ (shi) and ン (n) (call this Group 1) and the ツ (tsu), (ソ) so, and ノ (no) characters (call this Group 2).

Now let’s look at Group 1 (the シ (shi) and ン (n) characters). What do these characters have in common? Notice how they both have a bottom slopey line that is curved upward only slightly. Also, you’ll notice that the angle of the dot(s) at the top of each character are on an almost horizontal angle.

So to sum up the difference - シ (shi), ン (n) are more HORIZONTAL in every aspect (both the bottom line and the dots), whereas the ツ (tsu), (ソ) so, and ノ (no) are more VERTICAL in every aspect (both the bottom line and the dots).

Now that we have separated these characters into two manageable groups (Group 1 and Group 2), let’s apply a separate mnemonic to each.

For Group 1 (シ (shi), ン (n) characters), imagine that the シ (shi) character represents a female face, with a mouth and two eyes tilted on the side. It’s a ’she’. Let the mnemonic be ‘SHE’. Imagine ’she’ ’she’ ’she’ whenever you see シ (shi).

Now notice that the ン (n) character, is identical except one of the eyes are closed! Imagine that ’she’ asked you to stay over for the night, but you were about to say ‘no’, however before you could, she quickly winked at you (with one eye closed). This caused you to stop in the middle of your speech, just with an ‘n’. You’re sort of shocked almost! It’s as if you can’t get the word ‘no’ out of your mouth because you feel butterflies running through your stomach as the girl is winking at you. Let ‘n….’ be your mnemonic. ‘She’ winks at you and surprises you, which prevents you from speaking properly, all you can say is ‘n…..’.

Now let’s look at Group 2 (ツ (tsu), (ソ) so, and ノ (no) characters). The mnemonic for all these characters is going to be a wave of varying degrees of strength. Notice how the bottom line represents a beach. The dots at the top left represent the waves.

Now for ツ (tsu), there are two dots at the top left, which means it’s obviously going to be the strongest wave of all! This will be called a ‘tsunami’ - ‘tsu’. Let your mnemonic for ツ (tsu) be ‘tsunami’. No other character has more dots than this at the top left!

Now for (ソ) so, there is only one dot at the top left. Since there is only one wave (dot), the wave is going to be ’soft’. Let your mnemonic for ’so’ be ’soft’. It’s not a ‘tsunami’ because there’s only one wave as opposed to two, so therefore it’s ’soft’.

Now for ノ (no), there are no waves at all, there is quite simply a beach with water that is so calm that you can’t see any waves coming out of it. Since there are no waves, imagine a Japanese person with an accent going ‘no wave’. He keeps saying ‘no, no no! No wave!’ Think ‘no’ for ‘No wave’.

Comparing シ (shi) to ツ (tsu) and ン (n) to (ソ) so.

A subtle yet noticeable difference between the シ (shi) and ツ (tsu) kana is that the dots and curve align along the left vertical edge while for ン (n) and (ソ) the dots and curve align along the top edge.

I've been studying for close to 12 years now and I still sometimes can't distinguish them if it's in an unfamiliar font and it's something like a name that doesn't have any context clues. So you may have problems for a long time.

zachandhobbes Wrote:I mean, I've been studying in high school and middle school classes for 4 or 5 years now so you'd think I'd at least have my hiragana and katakana down (Despite the low quality of the teaching), but I always stumble when I run into these.

I began studying Japanese years ago and still find katakana difficult to read compared to hiragana. I easily confuse ツ　シ　ソ　ン. Some of the strange fonts used don't help much either.

In Japanese 100 yen shops you can buy exercise books designed for Japanese children learning kana.They allow you to practice each character dozens of times and demonstrate stroke order, direction and how to finish each stroke (とめる, はねる or はらう). For example, with シ and ツ, the brush is lifted (はらう) towards the end of the last stroke resulting in a tapering end. Even without a brush, you can get a feel for these 書道 techniques with a thick pencil or felt pen. This effect is difficult to reproduce with a ball point pen but familiarity with it (which these exercise books can give) will improve your own writing technique and make it easier to recognise these characters. Although the fonts you encounter won't always demonstrate these calligraphic touches - kazelee's Pokemon samples are an example of this (but the helpful animations do show it).


These practice books are probably not easy to find outside of Japan but an online retailer might have them. Alternatively, animations, like those provided by kazelee, would provide helpful practice.

While I noticed the horizontal vs vertical orientation, that only let me know they were *different*; it didn't help me decide which particular one I was reading. The thing that stuck in my mind, and always think of is that シ "shi" and ン "n" end with a "lighter" sound, and thus end on rising strokes, while ツ "tsu" and ソ "so" end on a "heaver" sound, so the final stroke is down. Weird, I know, but that's what works for me.

cjon256 Wrote:I recommend you look carefully at the stroke order.

シ is basically top to bottom
ツ is basically left to right

As a result they look nothing alike in handwritten form. I find my シ is more easily confused with ミ than with ツ, but then I probably just have bad handwriting :-)

This sounds exactly right to me. I'm so many years out of practice with written Japanese that these characters completely confuse me now, but I remember a time when these characters were drilled into me over and over in calligraphy class when I was in preschool. As a result, at that time they seemed completely different to me. シ felt like three horizontal lines like 三, and ツ was more like three vertical lines like 川.

If needed i could scan the "studies on katakana tsu and shi and so and n" by a friend here.. it REALLY helped me and rescued my arse lol

Please do!

sorry for double post, but it's a bump with a question.

You see, everyone has been telling me their methods. ツ is "upwards", シ is "sideways"

yet look at this:


That TOTALLY looks like ツ! But it's actually シ! How can you possibly tell (assuming you didn't pick it up from context since ャ never comes after ツ)

zachandhobbes Wrote:sorry for double post, but it's a bump with a question.

You see, everyone has been telling me their methods. ツ is "upwards", シ is "sideways"

yet look at this:
http://ploader.net/files/291bdcf79247f0b...f9a3f3.PNG

That TOTALLY looks like ツ! But it's actually シ! How can you possibly tell (assuming you didn't pick it up from context since ャ never comes after ツ)

By itself I doubt you could, however with the context you can easily read it without even thinking about it.

zachandhobbes Wrote:sorry for double post, but it's a bump with a question.

You see, everyone has been telling me their methods. ツ is "upwards", シ is "sideways"

yet look at this:
http://ploader.net/files/291bdcf79247f0b...f9a3f3.PNG

That TOTALLY looks like ツ! But it's actually シ! How can you possibly tell (assuming you didn't pick it up from context since ャ never comes after ツ)

The shorter length of the second stroke is also a clue, methinks. There's also a slight bend in the longer dash; both add a sense of downward/rightward directionality.

Another thing that always helped me was the alignment of the top of the longest 'mouth' stroke -- that is, ソ and ツ line up better with it if you imagine drawing a horizontal line across the top--I'm sure there's a typographical term for this related to words like 'kerning'... the シ and ン on the other hand tend to peek above it a bit.

ツ、top part of 学　
シ, 氵


As for reading, like others have mentioned, I have problems too. I don't care at all too much though.

zachandhobbes Wrote:sorry for double post, but it's a bump with a question.

You see, everyone has been telling me their methods. ツ is "upwards", シ is "sideways"

yet look at this:
http://ploader.net/files/291bdcf79247f0b...f9a3f3.PNG

That TOTALLY looks like ツ! But it's actually シ! How can you possibly tell (assuming you didn't pick it up from context since ャ never comes after ツ)

Don't worry. It does look like ツ. If you look at the third stroke carefully, it seems it's supposed to have written from the top right to the bottom, which implies it must be ツ. It might be a typo.

zachandhobbes Wrote:http://ploader.net/files/291bdcf79247f0b...f9a3f3.PNG

That TOTALLY looks like ツ! But it's actually シ! How can you possibly tell (assuming you didn't pick it up from context since ャ never comes after ツ)

Even though the intent was to write a シ, the character in that image is a ツ through and through, no two ways about it. Where did you find that image?

So your question is tantamount to asking "how do i tell the difference between b and d, even if someone writes one backwards?" You can't, without looking at the context.

= し = Counterclockwise


= つ = Clockwise


= "N", like in