2.1. Hiragana for vowels


Japanese has only five vowels similar to Spanish and Italian, and they are easy to distinguish.

Vowels:
HiraganaPhonemeRomanizationDescription
(a)/a/"a" audio The tongue position for this vowel is between that for "a" in father and that for "a" in cat.
(i)/i/"i" audio Similar to "ea" in beat.
(u)/u/"u" audio Similar to "oo" in cool, 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 "e" 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. The word owe sounds /o/ + /u/ to Japanese speakers.

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
Romanization:ai
Meaning:love (noun)

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

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

Note: The phoneme /o u/ is pronounced as "oo" in colloquial Japanese, so /ko u/ becomes "koo", /so u/ becomes "soo", etc. Be sure that the "oo" is a duplication of Japanese "o", not the English "oo" in school. In Romanization, consecutive vowels are written with an alphabet with a circumflex ("^") instead of the two same vowel alphabets. You can use a macron ("¯") rather than a circumflex. The word above is pronounced as "oo", and it is written "ô" in Romanization. Keep in mind that "ô" has two syllables and as a result it is twice as long as "o", even though it looks as if it had only one vowel.

Hiragana:(a)(o)(i)
Phonemes:aoi
Romanization:aoi
Meaning:hollyhock (noun)

Hiragana:(i)(e)
Phonemes:ie'
Romanization:ie
Meaning:house (noun)

Hiragana:(i)(o)(u)
Phonemes:iou
Romanization:iô
Meaning:sulfur (noun)

Note: A circumflex is used again. This word has three syllables, not two.


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