2.1. Hiraganas for vowels


Vowels:
HiraganaPhonemePronunciationDescription
(a)/a/"a" audio Similar to the first sound in eye. Do not change the mouth position during the pronunciation. The tongue position for this vowel is between that for "a" in father and that for "a" in cat.
(i)/i/"i" audio Same as "ea" in beat.
(u)/u/"u" audio Similar to "oo" in book, but Japanese "u" is a more relaxed sound than that. You don't have to round your lips tightly.
(e)/e/"e" audio Similar to the first sound in end, but the mouth position for Japanese "e" is not as wide as that for English "e".
(o)/o/"o" audio Similar to the first sound in owe. Do not change the mouth position during the pronunciation.

These are all the five vowels Japanese has, so they are easy to distinguish from one another. You don't have to worry about the vowel pronunciations very much. What is really important is the length of pronunciation, which makes the phonemes /a/ and /aa/ different. Having two syllables, the latter is twice as long as the former. That is why every syllable must have the same length of time in Japanese.

It is believed that Japanese had eight vowels: /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/, /ï/, /ë/, and /ö/. The last three were lost 1200 years ago.

Hiragana examples:

Hiragana:(a)(i)
Phonemes:a'i
Meaning:love (noun)


Hiragana:(u)(e)
Phonemes:ue
Meaning:up, above (noun)


Hiragana:(o)(u)
Phonemes:o'u
Meaning:king (noun)

Note: The phoneme /ou/ is pronounced as "oo" in colloquial Japanese.
So /kou/ becomes "koo", /sou/ becomes "soo", etc.
Be sure that the "oo" is not "oo" in school but a duplication of Japanese "o".



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