Japanese phonology

Okay, so let's talk about how the sounds of words work in Japanese. You know how we use letters to make words in English, right? Well, in Japanese they use symbols called "kanji" and "hiragana" to make words.

Now, when you say a word in Japanese, it's important to know that each syllable is pronounced with about the same amount of time and stress - this is called "mora". So if you say "to" it's one mora, if you say "ka" it's also one mora, if you say "Tokyo" it's three moras.

Japanese also has five vowel sounds, which are "a", "i", "u", "e", and "o". Each sound is pronounced pretty clearly and isn't really blended together with other sounds like it can be in English.

There are also a lot of sounds in Japanese that don't exist in English. For example, there's a sound that's like a mix between "r" and "l" called "r" or "ra", but there's also a sound that's like a mix between "h" and "f" called "h" or "ha". These sounds can be really tricky to learn!

So there you have it, in Japanese each syllable is pronounced the same way, with clear vowel sounds and some unique consonant sounds.