Double "letters"

[celephais]

Sorry I can't write in Japanese on my computer yet, but bear wth me and I'll try to make things as clear as I can!

My Question:
I was writing out flashcards last night and I came upon ""itterashai" and "ittekimasu." I was surprised to see in my text that the small "tsu" came right after the "i" in both words. I would have thought that the small "tsu" would have come after the "te" to double the "t." A Japanese friend I asked said that the small "tsu" had the job of "standing in" for the first doubled "letter." Is this always the case? I'm still a liittle confused.
Anyone wanna explain this to me?

Thanks!
Amanda

[goulnik]

A small tsu っ, called a sokuon, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). For example, compare さか saka 'hill' with さっか sakka 'author'. It also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop. However, it cannot be used to double the na, ni, nu, ne, no syllables' consonants - to double them, the singular n (ん) is added in front of the syllable. For example さんにん sannin 'three people'.

source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana
not much else to explain

[Javizy]

It's very confusing because there is no such thing as a 'doubled letter' or 'double consonant' in Japanese. っ represents a pause the length of a single mora. いって has three moras, so the っ should be the same length as the い and て.

[taikutsu]

"Ittekimasu" is written いってきますin hiragana, which correspond to i-t-te-ki-ma-su. For whatever reason the little っ is written with the next letter doubled in romaji, but don't worry about romaji too much. Of course, the っ represents something that sounds like a little pause before the next sound in speech, so it would be strange to put it anywhere else.

[Ben Bullock]

I was writing out flashcards last night and I came upon ""itterashai" and "ittekimasu." I was surprised to see in my text that the small "tsu" came right after the "i" in both words. I would have thought that the small "tsu" would have come after the "te" to double the "t." A Japanese friend I asked said that the small "tsu" had the job of "standing in" for the first doubled "letter." Is this always the case?

I suppose one way of looking at it is that each kana is a consonant plus a vowel pair. For example と is t + o. Then the う (u) in とう is near the o so it makes the o longer, hence "tou" or "tō" but the っ in いって is nearer the t so it makes the t longer, hence itte. That's how I've always thought about it, although I'd never really considered your question until now.