Help with typing things like てぃ (for Vocab, mostly)

[Edited to add: Main solution already found, and appended below.]


Especially when trying to enter answers for certain vocab words (usually loan words), sometimes we need to type uncommon but legitimate kana constructions like てぃ or, more accurately, katakana ティ (although usually when appropriate, the text entry will automatically convert hiragana to katakana on Enter). For example, パーティー, ボランティア, and actually quite a few others I haven’t encountered yet (Bunpro Vocab search for ティ).

There are easy-to-type automatic conversions for more-common constructions, like ‘ju’ auto-converting to ‘じゅ’, and there are even some auto-conversions for uncommon constructions (mostly for loan words), like ‘fi’ → ‘ふぃ’, and ‘vi’ → ‘ヴぃ’.

Meanwhile there are also some shortcuts for very-common single-kana like ‘si’ short-cutting to ‘し’, instead of having to type three characters ‘shi’. Likewise, there’s ‘tu’ for ‘tsu’ → ‘つ’. And, most relevant for this post, there’s ‘ti’ instead of ‘chi’ → ‘ち’.

So, if you want to type てぃ, well ‘ti’ is unfortunately already taken! ‘ti’ converts to ‘ち’, rather than the much-less-common ‘てぃ’.

So, I’m hoping that there is an easy, short way that already exists to type てぃ using standard romaji-input IME (or the browser-script equivalent used by Bunpro and other Japanese learning websites).

I do know that there is an ‘extended’ way to type てぃ, which is to enter each sub-kana separately, with ‘te’ for て and ‘xi’ or ‘li’ for ‘small’ or ‘little’ ぃ, thus taking four characters ‘texi’ or ‘teli’ to get てぃ. But is there an existing shortcut that only takes two (or possibly just three?) characters which results in a proper ‘てぃ’?

Side question: Is てぃ the only (relatively) common combination for loanwords that (seemingly) requires four characters / extended input to type it, especially for the Vocab currently in use on Bunpro? Or are there others? I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but maybe I just haven’t come across them yet. (Also, are ‘x_’ and ‘l_’ the only ways to output these kinds of ‘small’/‘little’ kana, or is there any other way/keyboard-combo?)

If other folks can mention some other clunky combos used in Bunpro Vocab, I’ll edit this post to include them. Thanks!


Solutions so far!

Thanks to @Slysoft , @Pablunpro , and @Humin for quickly coming to the rescue with these answers, which happen to use three characters instead of only two, but at least not four! :sweat_smile: (in あいうえお order):

For てぃ and similar

てぃ

  • てぃ itself can be entered with ‘thi’.

て (general case) ・ て_ = th_ (= tel_ = tex_)

平仮名(ひらがな) 片仮名(カタカナ) romaji Vocab?
てゃ テャ tha
てぃ ティ thi :heavy_check_mark:
てゅ テュ thu
てぇ テェ the
てょ テョ tho

で (with 濁点(だくてん)) ・ で_ = dh_ (= del_ = dex_)

平仮名 片仮名 romaji Vocab?
でゃ デャ dha
でぃ ディ dhi
でゅ デュ dhu
でぇ デェ dhe
でょ デョ dho

Additional

There’s probably some official table somewhere compiling all of these. But anyway, here’s more that @Humin found (although probably none of these appear in Bunpro Vocab, according to @mrnoone :sweat_smile:).

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There isn’t a standard two-character shortcut for typing the ‘てぃ’ combination using romaji input. As you correctly noted, you’ll usually have to type ‘texi’ or ‘teli’ to create this.

It is mostly because those are fairly rare and used in words of foreign origin.

x_ and i_ should cover everything, but there are other not mentioned combos like:

  • フェ (fe) as in ‘cafe’ → ‘kafe’ → ‘カフェ’ → ‘kafe’
  • ウィ (wi) as in ‘wiki’ → ‘wiki’ → ‘ウィキ’ → ‘wiki’

Cheers

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you can just type thi, at least on mozc

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Indeed, ‘thi’ also works with Japanese Microsoft IME. BTW, there is also ‘du’ for .

Although it is of no practical use, I’ve tried ‘tha’, ‘the’, 'tho and ‘thu’: テャ, テェ, テョ and テュ.

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The shortcuts are:
tha てゃ・テャ
thi てぃ・ティ
thu てゅ・テュ
the てぇ・テェ
tho てょ・テョ
And dakuten:
dha でゃ・デャ
dhi でぃ・ディ
dhu でゅ・デュ
dhe でぇ・デェ
dho でょ・デョ

Some of the combinations get extra silly, like you can do
qa/qwa/kwa くぁ・クァ (kwi/kwu/kwe/kwo don’t work because ???)
qi/qwi くぃ・クィ
qwu くぅ・クゥ (qu is く for some reason???)
qe/qwe くぇ・クェ
qo/qwo くぉ・クォ
qya くゃ・クャ
qyu くゅ・クュ
qyo くょ・クョ

None of which I’ve seen even trying to research obscure loanwords.

Funnily enough, while only kwa does something, there’s an entirely gw* line which I cannot possibly imagine having any use other than pretending to be a dragon on the internet. Even the loanword for guacamole doesn’t use it. (Apparently Guantanamo does, but only rarely).
gwa ぐぁ・グァ
gwi ぐぃ・グィ
gwu ぐぅ・グゥ
gwe ぐぇ・グェ
gwo ぐぉ・グォ

Even more bonuses I discovered by typoing!
wyi ゐ・ヰ
wye ゑ・ヱ

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Even these two!! Great work, 皆さん! 確かにお疲れ様です!

Not too long before seeing this, I actually discovered that “who” gets you うぉ (though granted it’s no shorter than “ulo,” though since it represents “wo” in loanwords, it’s less mental gymnastics for me)

This works the rest of the vowels as well except for ‘u’

wha うぁ・ウァ
whi うぃ・ウィ (also gets you ゐ・ヰ)
whu う・ウ
whe うぇ・ウェ (also gets you ゑ・ヱ)
who うぉ・ウォ

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Might be able to work something out from these

Should probably make a spreadsheet for these, just to have for future reference.

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