The first thing a student must learn is to correctly pronounce these syllables, written in the Roman alphabet but which represent different sounds. He must listen carefully to the instructor and learn to discriminate the sounds, to utter the sound correctly, and also to associate the sounds with certain combinations of Roman letters without regard to his long established English reading habits.
- a. Column 1
Column 1 in the above chart represents the 5 vowels of Japanese.
| a | similar | to | a | in | father |
| i | similar" | to" | i | in" | machine |
| u | similar" | to" | u | in" | put |
| e | similar" | to" | e | in" | bet |
| o | similar" | to" | o | in" | sōap |
Single Japanese vowels are pronounced short and crisp. Long vowel sounds are indicated by doubling the symbols: e.g., aa, ii, uu, ee, and oo. The time required to pronounce these long vowels is almost three times that of short vowels. For a long o, the original mouth shape must be maintained for the duration to avoid forming an ou diphthong, which is one of the very common errors that the
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