Head Start for Mastering Japanese (1) -Japanese Vowels-

According to the English Phonetic Symbols, there are 36 vowels in English. How many vowels in Japanese? FIVE, yes, only 5 vowels! And they are all short vowels.

Remember, “Ah, we soon get old.”
Japanese for Busy People, one of the most popular Japanese text books, teaches as follows: pronounce the vowels of the sentence, “Ah, we soon get old,” short and clear, and these 5 vowels sound almost the same as the Japanese ones.

Speaking and listening
I have experience helping people from high school students to corporate executives to study Japanese. Most of them stated that they have difficulty with Japanese listening comprehension and find speaking Japanese much easier than listening. At first, I didn't understand why this was the case. As for me, English is my second language; I have to learn many sounds that don’t exist in Japanese, my first language. Whereas both listening and speaking English are difficult for me, speaking is the harder of the two. You cannot pronounce a sound if you don’t know how it sounds. Native English speakers are already familiar with the sounds that Japanese contains. I had assumed listening to Japanese would not be difficult for them.

More choice, more puzzling
Let’s say, you have to choose one from 5 desserts and they look equally good. Blueberry cheesecake, strawberry short cake, chocolate cake by Godiva, etc… your selection is fairly easy when there are so few choices. But let's say you have several spectacular choices, 36 desserts from all over the world but you can choose only one. Some Japanese learners try to listen to and find Japanese vowels from all 36 English vowels and in the process over-complicate the choice. The truth is you should just choose from 5 and not from 36.

Make it simple
Do you remember the sentence, “Ah, we soon get old”? Please keep it in your mind the Japanese language has only 5 vowels. Don’t compare the sounds with many other vowels you have learned from English. By the way, I feel I should make a more cheerful sentence than “Ah, we soon get old,” to explain Japanese vowels.