Hiragana for vowels

Japanese have only 5 vowels like Latin and Spanish, and they are easy to distinguish.

Vowels
Hiragana	Romanization	Pronunciation	Description
あ	a	[a]	Similar to the first sound of eye [aI], but without the ending [I]. It is pronounced in the front of the mouth, while the [α:] in father [fα:ð] is pronounced in the back of the mouth. The [æ] in ash [æ] is not as wide as [a]
い	i	[i]	Similar to the [i:] in eat [i:t].
う	u	[]	Similar to the [u:] in cool [ku:l], but [] is a more relaxed sound than that. You don't have to round your lips tightly. It is quite different from the [U] in good [gUd].
え	e	[e]	Similar to the first sound of the [eI] in day [deI], but without the ending [I]. The [ε] in end [εnd] is wider than [e].
お	o	[o]	Similar to the first sound in owe [oU], but without the ending [U].

You don't have to worry about the vowel pronunciations very much. What is really important is the metronomic rhythm of Japanese. You must pronounce vowels with the same time length.

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

Hiragana examples:

Hiragana:	あ	い
Pitch:	H	L
Romanization:	a	i
Meaning:	love (noun)

Hiragana:	う	え
Pitch:	L	H
Romanization:	u	e
Meaning:	upper (noun)

Hiragana:	お	う
Pitch:	H	L
Romanization:	ô
Meaning:	king (noun)

Note: A combination of a kana with the vowel "o" and a kana of "u" is pronounced with [o:], not [o]. A combination of a kana with vowel "o" and a kana for "o" is also pronounced with [o:], not [oo]. In these cases, the second kana is there just to make the previous "o" longer and is technically described as the phoneme /H/. The sound [o:] is the same as [o] but twice as long as [o]. When Romanized, it is written as either "ô" ("o" with a circumflex) or "ō" ("o" with a macron). Remember that Japanese is metronomic. The sound [o] ("o") has one mora, while [o:] ("ô") has two morae. If you pronounce the former in 0.2 second, you must pronounce the latter in 0.4 second.

Hiragana:	あ	お	い
Pitch:	L	H	H
Romanization:	a	o	i
Meaning:	hollyhock (noun)

Hiragana:	い	え
Pitch:	L	H
Romanization:	i	e
Meaning:	house (noun)

Hiragana:	い	お	う
Pitch:	L	H	H
Romanization:	i	ô
Meaning:	sulfur (noun)

Note: This word has three morae, not two

Romanization, phonemes, and morae

Romanization

Writing Japanese with the Latin alphabet is called Romanization. Japanese people use kana and kanji to write Japanese, and they aren't always able to write Romanized Japanese. Romanization is used mainly for non-Japanese. Vowels in Romanized Japanese are based on Latin (Spanish) pronunciation, while consonants are mainly based on English pronunciation. English speakers tend to mispronounce vowels when they read Romanized Japanese.

There are two major ways of Romanization. One is Kunrei and the other is Hepburn. The former is established as an international standart (ISO-3602) because it reflects the Japanese sound system well, but the latter is much more commonly used and all Japanese words found in English are written with it because it's easier for English speakers to read even though it doesn't reflect the Japanese sound system. The hiragana し, for example, is written as "si" in Kunrei Romanization and "shi" in Hepburn Romanization. Its pronunciation being very similar to the English word she, "shi" is easier for English speakers to pronounce it correctly than "si", which might pronounces like sea.

I use Kunrei Romanization as well as kana, because it helps you to understand Japanese grammar, and I will also list Hepburn Romanization in parentheses when it is different.

Phonemes

Phonemes are the smallest units of the sound system of a language. Actual sounds produced by phonemes are called phones. Phones can vary with dialects and speakers, but the set of phonemes stays the same. For example, the English phoneme /t/ has the following phones:

Phoneme	Phone	Word	Pronunciation
/t/	[t^h]	time	[t^haIm]
	[t]	style	[staIl]
	[]	letter	[lε]

A letter enclosed by slashes is a phoneme and one enclosed by brackets is a phone. Even though [t^h], [t], and [] are different sounds, they are the same phoneme because English speakers treat them as the same sound unit.

Understanding phonemes is not very important when you learn Japanese, as long as you can understand Romanized Japanese, because Latin letters well reflect underlying Japanese grammar. The exceptions are the phonemes /N/, /Q/, and /H/, which are not consistenly written in Romanization

Morae and kana

Basically, consonants must be followed by vowels in Japanese. The exceptions are semivowels, which can be inserted between a consonant and a vowel, and the two special phonemes /N/ and /Q/.This strict rule makes the Japanese syllable structure very simple.

Japanese pronunciation always has either one of the following structures:

a vowel (including /H/)
a consonant + a vowel
a consonant + a semivowel + a vowel
/N/
/Q/

The most important rule is that Japanese pronunciation is metronomic - any of the five structures above has the same length of time. Linguists calls this minimum beat of pronunciation morae. Morae (plural of mora) are close to syllables, but they are slightly different. A syllable has one and only one sonority peak (a vowel or a vowel-like sound), while /N/ and /Q/ have no vowel-like sound. Perhaps you know Latin also has morae and syllables. Since syllables are not important at all in Japanese, some people call Japanese morae syllables in order to make it easier to understand. I use morae in this site.

One kana (hiragana or katakana) stands for one mora, not one phoneme. You cannot describe a consonant that is not followed by a vowel, but you don't need it, because Japanese doesn't have such pronunciation.

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Hiragana for vowels

Romanization, phonemes, and morae

Romanization

Phonemes

Morae and kana

Katakana section.

Grammar section.

Kanji section.

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