Post by Shannon JacobsFound a number of questions about how to enter it. Personally, I use the sequence t-e-l-i-F7 (or some other convert key), but I'm asking a rather screwier question, and so far I haven't been able to find a prior reference, outside in the big Web or inside this nearly morbid newsgroup...
How should the katakana form ティ be represented in Romaji? Yes, it probably came from "ty", but the letter "y" is not a legal character in Romaji, so how should I reverse the writing?
Longish story why I want it, but is anyone actually interested in those bizarre details?
I have a frequently-asked question page about it here:
http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/kana-without-romaji.html
The text is as follows:
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What kana do not have romanized forms?
There is no standard form of romanization for some forms of kana. In particular there is no official form of romanization for full-sized kana combined with smaller versions of the vowel kana, 'ぁ', 'ぃ', 'ぅ', 'ぇ' and 'ぉ', the smaller versions of the ''y'' kana, 'ゃ', 'ゅ', and 'ょ', and the sokuon or small ''tsu'' kana 'っ'.
There is also no standard way of romanizing common combinations such as 'トゥ' of katakana ''to'' and small ''u'', used to represent sounds as in the English word 'too'. Some people write this pair as ''tu'', but this may be confused with the ''tu'' Nippon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki romanizations of the kana ツ, romanized as ''tsu'' in Hepburn romanization.
On a computer or word processor, these smaller kana may be produced in various ways. For example, an 'x' or an 'l' preceding the romanization of the full-sized kana produces a small version on some systems, thus ''xtu'' gives 'っ' on a Microsoft computer. See How can I input small kana like ぃ, っ and ょ, or づ on a computer? However this is not standardized, and these forms are restricted to use in input methods (see How is Japanese input on a computer?); they are not used to represent the smaller kana in romanized Japanese.
99式 is an extended romaji system from The Society for the Romanization of the Japanese Alphabet that is intended to formalize solutions to many of the above shortcomings.
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There is also another page on how to input these characters on a computer:
http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/small-kana.html
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How can I input small kana like ぃ, っ and ょ, or づ on a computer?
Most input methods recognize several different ways of inputting these kana. As a group, ティ or ディ can usually be input as "thi" or "dhi". Small kana like ぃ, っ and ょ can usually be input by typing x or l before, hence "xi", "xtu", and "xyo".
The づ kana in つづける should correspond to "du" in most input systems, but if not then "dzu" is usually OK.
If you need to input ゐ (wi) or ゑ (we), the obsolete kana (see What is the use of the "we" and "wi" kana?), these can be obtained by typing "wi" or "we" and then using the henkan (kana to kanji) function.
See also What are the names of the Japanese non-kana, non-kanji symbols? for the names of various punctuation symbols, which can be used to input them.
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