Intermission: Vowels

Intermissions are useful, but if they stress you out, you shouldn't read them.

Japanese only has five vowels. The quality of the vowels sometimes changes slightly depending on the sounds near them, but not enough to make new vowels.

Unlike english, japanese has a very regular orthography (how writing corresponds to sounds). The japanese vowels are, for our intents and purposes, always pronounced the same way, except for when they're not pronounced at all. More on that later.

Resources about the japanese vowel sounds are widespread on the internet. Explaining sounds through text is a fool's errand.