Everyone tries to use Google Translate to learn languages these days, but it can be really counterproductive!

Could we get some kind of table support in our custom JS?

I don't think anyone's actively maintaining it (thanks to cypher for all the hard work!) but I think some of us have the technical ability if we put in the time.

I don't really know why we put resource stuff on meta instead of on the main site, but I guess it doesn't really matter too much.

So I'm fine with migrating them.

We decided a while back they're off-topic on the main site, and we use a custom close reason for them, usually because all we want to do is direct them to our existing list of resources. But for questions like this one that doesn't make as much sense, because they aren't really answered by our existing resource list.

@LucasTizma Give an example?

In general, っ lengthens the following sound.

In a song, however, it works a little differently.

So, when you say うまった normally, you hold that /t/ sound for a whole extra beat. That makes it like three times as long as normal (because the /t/ portion of た is half of the beat /t/ + /a/).

There's some variation there, but the basic idea is /t/ is way longer. But while you're holding /t/, there's actually no sound, because the airflow is paused.

And when you're singing, that's a problem, 'cause you can't sing a note if you're not making any sound.

So what you do instead is continue the vowel into the next beat. You still lengthen the following /t/, but not nearly as much.

That's not quite it. It's more like う　ま　あ　った

That way you can sing all four beats :-)

Japanese has consonants, just like any other language. /t/ is a "stop" consonant, meaning the airflow actually stops while you're pronouncing it.

But not every consonant is like that. If you pronounce あっさり, the /s/ sound never actually stops the airflow. The airflow narrows a lot, producing high-frequency turbulence, but it never stops entirely.

And the っ in this case means you just keep making that /s/ sound for a while.

The う・ま・あ・った thing is done as an exception in singing, yeah. You wouldn't do that normally when speaking. And I mean, if you're the singer, it's up to you how to sing, so you don't have to do it when singing either, if you don't want to sing that particular note.

So you might not always hear people do it, but it's pretty normal.