Welcoming Our Island Outlook's newest feature...

I wanted to get this started as soon as possible, so here it is: Our Island Outlook's "Japanese Word Lesson of the Week". I'm still trying to decide what materials I'd like to use to teach both myself and our readers some new words and phrases so until I get all my ducks in a row, I'll leave you with some vowel pronunciation help.

Japanese Word of the Week may or may not feature more than one word each time so please do not take the "word" part of the feature too literally. It may be a word, words, or some interesting and/or helpful information about the Japanese language. I'm kind of winging this. :)

Today I'm sharing modified information from a book we have on our bookshelf called Ultimate Japanese: Beginner-Intermediate. It is written by Hiroko Storm, Ph.D., and published through Living Language.

Vowels: A, I, U, E, and O

Japanese vowels are pronounced differently than how we pronounce vowels in the English language. Compared to English, you can get a feel of how Japanese vowels are pronounced below:

• a - like the a in father, but short and crisp
• i - like the ee in keep, but short and crisp
• u - like the u in lute, but without rounding the lips
• e - like the e in prey
• o - like the o in corn, but shorter

Some Japanese words that contain vowels:

• a - ashita (tomorrow) 
• i - isu (chair), inu (dog)
• u - umi (sea), uchi (house)
• e - ehon (picture book)
• o - obi (sash), kao (face), aoi (blue)

As an example we'll use "inu", which means dog. When we lived at our old house we were out on a walk at night when we came up on a woman who had a couple children with her. The child that was holding her hand was exclaiming, "Inu! Inu! Inu!" and sounded slightly scared.


I knew he was saying "dog" because of the breed of dog, Shiba Inu. When the little boy was exclaiming, "Inu! Inu! Inu!" it sounded like, "Eenu! Eenu! Eenu!" which goes along with how Japanese vowels compare to English vowels a few paragraphs above. The "nu" sound is short, not drawn out like "new". It'd be grand if I could find a sound clip for upcoming features - that'd help a lot. I'll have to putter around and see what I can find.

Here ends the first "Japanese Word of the Week". I'm off to take a shower and then am going to settle down on the couch with Mercy by Jodi Picoult until Little Miss Evelyn wakes up from her snooze.