Page 35 - Basic Japanese

For many American speakers all nine possible positions

are used. The Japanese speaker, however, fills only five of
the spaces as in the following words:

[cue 01-5]

In English, we spell the same vowel sound many different

ways (dough, toe, slow, so, sew, etc.) and the same letter
may indicate a number of different vowels (line, marine, inn,

shirt, etc.). In Romanized Japanese, the same symbol is
normally used for each occurrence of the same vowel. You
should learn these symbols and the sounds they stand for,

and not confuse this simple use of these letters with their
many English uses. The use of the letters may be

remembered as: i as in ski, e as in pet, a as in father, o as in
so, u as in rhubarb. In both English and Japanese, the lips

are relaxed for vowels in the front and center of the mouth,
and somewhat rounded for those in the back. Many

Japanese round their lips very little, however, and you will
probably notice that the Japanese u involves less of this lip-