Doubled Vowels

Today is our very last lesson related to writing (of course excluding Kanji) and it is about Chouonpu (Doubled vowels).

Let us start with Katakana first and explain why I use the ー on my name.

The 'dash' is just to extend a vowel, for example, my name is Noora, it is not Nora so if there was no 'dash' in Japanese I would write it as:

ヌラ

This would sound wrong, because I stress the O on my name (in Japanese the U). Then I would have to use an extension in order for the Japanese to pronounce my name correctly, like so:

ヌーラ

 So just as tsu extends a consonant that comes after it, the dash extends a vowel that comes before it.

The "dash" is not used in Hiragana, instead we write double vowels:

For Double Vowels of the same kind it is pretty much straightforward:

 おかあさん (okaasan) means mother
おにいさん (oniisan) means older brother
おねえさん (oneesan) means older sister
おおきい (ookii) means big
くうき (kuuki) means air

For Double Vowels of a different kind it depends on which is the dominant vowel. So just remember this rule and always pronounce the dominant vowel when you encounter them together whatever order they're in:

お > う
え > い

So OO + OU + UO all sound like OO, because O is larger than U:

おとうさん (otousan sounds like otoosan) means father

And EE + EI + IE all sound like EE, because E is larger than I:

せんせい (sensei sounds like sensee) means teacher

Actually my teacher's name is ゆきえさん (Yukie) and I had a hard time saying her name thinking I had to pronounce every letter the way it sounds until she told me it's pronounced (Yukee). She didn't explain much about it, so I wanted to try to make it simpler for all you ghosts.