25479
I was wondering why is the sound "cha" spelled with a ゃ rather than a ぁ.  
きゃ, for example, is "kya"; so shouldn't ちゃ be more like... "chya"? The same
goes for しゃ.  
I suppose "sha" and "cha" kind of already sound like "shya" and "chya",
respectively; is this why or is there another reason?  
Additionally, is there even such a thing as a small ぁ, if ゃ has this role
anyway?
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2015-07-02T20:49:31.567
25478
2015-07-03T00:34:56.717
10518
question
spelling
Why is the sound "cha" spelled as ちゃ rather than ちぁ?
This is far from being a silly question. For one thing, the half-sized vowels
(ぁ、ぃ、ぅ、ぇ、ぉ） didn't actually exist in the first place. They are mainly used
while writing down a spoken sentence where the speaker insisted on the vowels,
even more than the actual word would require. For example, you could find the
sentence 「とぉぉても嬉{うれ}しいです！」 in a manga, that would mean that the character
strongly insisted on the お sound in 「とても」. In English you would simply report
that as "I'm veeeeery happy!".

Now, going back to the main subject. The Japanese is initially an only-spoken
language, their writing system is entirely taken from the Chinese, even the
kanas, which are all _largely_ simplified kanjis. In our case that matters
because **even before** their writing system was invented, the sounds "cha",
"chu" and "cho" existed, but not "che", "chya", "chyu" and "chyo", so the
"cha"&co. took their place in the writing system. Why bother to create a new
notation for something which works the same way as the other consonnants when
there's a system which works just fine? Of course, the same goes with the sh-
(and its j- derivative).

Hope my explanations were clear enough, I tried my best for explaining a
Japanese fact in English, while being French.
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2015-07-03T00:34:56.717
25479
2015-07-03T00:34:56.717
10514
25478
answer