Pronouncing Vowels?

[かにちわ]

I've been trying to learn Japanese in my free time, and I know these basic vowels:

あ
い
う
え
お

But how do you pronounce these? I've been searching for a week but I cant find anywhere that explains it!

Thanks to anyone that can help me.

[nice gaijin]

did a quick search and came up with http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/m.rowley/resources.html

I remember seeing a few sites with pronunciation guides including audio samples, but i can't think of the url off-hand. Try Youtube, I remember there being a kind of a song or something. just search for "hiragana" or "katakana"

[かにちわ]

Well that site made no sence to me、but i search up hiragana and I found a site.


But when they say pronounced as "aa" or "ee" do they mean long vowels? Or not?

[Tomii515]

Uh, i'll try to explain it I guess:

a = 'a' in 'father'
i = 'ee' in 'meet'
u = 'oo' in 'moon' (but ur lips are spead like saying 'ee' rather then rounded)
e = 'e' in 'met'
o = 'o' in 'no' (but you don't sya the sort of 'oo' sound at the end of the 'o' in 'no')
aa = 'a' but longer
ii = 'i' but longer
uu = 'u' but longer
ee/ei = 'e' but longer
oo/ou = 'o' but longer

basically?

:|

[nice gaijin]

I try to avoid equating Japanese vowels to English ones, because they are only similar. Further complicating the matter is the fact that English speakers don't all pronounce them the same way. The best approach is to find actual recordings of native speakers and try to mimic them.

This is the video I was talking about, since the site with hundreds of links to study resources made no sense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWR1Ziynt8g

[Nagato]

Try this site http://tisc.isc.u-toyama.ac.jp/raicho-cgi-bin/quiz/quiz.cgi?mode=list_tests
hiragana&katakana with voice, stroke order, and origin.
Here for more sound, like dakuon (more convenient using opera) http://www.saiga-jp.com/pronunciation_voice.html

[Tomii515]

I try to avoid equating Japanese vowels to English ones, because they are only similar. Further complicating the matter is the fact that English speakers don't all pronounce them the same way. The best approach is to find actual recordings of native speakers and try to mimic them.

This is the video I was talking about, since the site with hundreds of links to study resources made no sense. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWR1Ziynt8g

yeah, youre right.
i would have used IPA or x-sampa, but i dunno if he knows that so...