I just stumbled in this forum through google and I found it very interesting. I'm a hardcore gamer, and I'm currently learning japanese from my spare time for the sake of understanding anime and japanese games. I got a lot of question in my japanese, I hope this site could also help. If I may start asking: How come in other dictionaries, they spell this like this: 我慢強い がまんづよい gamanzuyoi But if you look carefully, the 強 included is pronounce/read as つ but they spell it as づ And Is "我慢 強い" a separate words like strong patience? 我 - self On reading:ガ 慢 - self-conceit On reading:マン 我慢 - patience Kun reading:がまん 強 - strong Kun reading: [FONT=ＭＳ Ｐゴシック]つよ（い）[/FONT]
In short, when a words is composed of multiple characters the first sound of the 2nd (or later) character can get either a ten ten (the two dashes) or a maru (dot). This has to do with aspirated and nonaspirated sounds, afaik. I could explain it in more detail but unfortunately I don't know the English linguistic terms to do so.
What they both said. Easy example is conveyor sushi: Kaiten-zushi. Sushi becomes zushi because it's a little easier to say when not the beginning of a word. Kuchi is mouth, but river mouth is kawa-guchi. Kawa-kuchi is harder to say and one ends up saying kawaguchi anyway (or at least, obtaining a distinction is harder).
