![]() ![]() Take a look at this picture as it shows how most elongated vowels will sound. It will soon become apparent why I keep mentioning this. If I sound like I’m repeating myself, bear with me. The first thing you should know is that, generally speaking, the elongated vowels will sound like one continuous sound. However, there are a few things that you will need to be aware of. You simply hold the same vowel sound in the word for twice as long and you normally would. The concept of long vowels is simple enough. Can you see and hear the difference between morae and syllables? They Are Not All The Same ![]() The word かあ is one syllable, but has two morae.The word かた has two syllables and has two morae.This is another example of why thinking of Japanese sounds in mora instead of syllables in helpful. The trick is that this word still gets two beats. ![]() The second example is also two morae, but since there is only one consonant and the two vowels are the same one it sounds more like there is only a single sound. Since there are two consonants and two vowels in this combination, it very clearly sounds like two sounds. The first one かた is two morae, which means that each one gets a single beat. If you take a look at the featured picture for this post at the top, then you will see that I put two examples with lines and dots underneath them. Each of these hiragana characters is given the same amount of “air time” when you pronounce them. This concept of “beats” is actually one that I found to be helpful when learning how to correctly pronounce Japanese words. If you think of each morae as a “beat” in music, then we could say that you hold the vowel for two beats in situations where the vowel is long, such as in かあ. It is the exact same sound, so rather than changing any movements in the mouth we simply hold onto it again. What can happen in certain words is that this か is followed immediately by an あ which also has the sound to it. If we take a look at the sound that か makes we can notate it as and see that the consonant is the and the vowel is the. 6) These Words Lead To Jokes What Is A Long Vowel? ![]()
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