How do the pronunciation of Japanese characters and words differ


I have been trying to teach myself Japanese. I learned the basic hiragana
(あ,い,う,お), but I am confused on how to pronounce words like あう. I was trying
to combine the sounds あ and う, but when I checked with [Google
Translate](http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?ie=UTF-8&tl=ja&q=%E3%81%82%E3%81%86),
I found the pronunciation was different (see link).

How did Google come up with that pronunciation? Are the sounds just run
together?




Just pronounce あ and then う. Google Translate does that. If you think that the
pronunciation is different, then probably your pronunciations of あ and う are
incorrect. None of these two sounds have exact equivalents in English, and う
in particular is very difficult to get correct.

More precisely, the う is "mumbled" because it is unstressed and pronounced
with low tone (あう has pitch /aꜜu/, and because the Japanese う really does
sound like mumbling (むむむ often meaning mumbling). あ is also more to the front
of your mouth than fAther but not as much as bAd. Think of the sound you make
when you are screaming. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!




Just pronounce あ and then う. Google Translate does that. If you think that the
pronunciation is different, then probably your pronunciations of あ and う are
incorrect. None of these two sounds have exact equivalents in English, and う
in particular is very difficult to get correct.

More precisely, the う is "mumbled" because it is unstressed and pronounced
with low tone (あう has pitch /aꜜu/, and because the Japanese う really does
sound like mumbling (むむむ often meaning mumbling). あ is also more to the front
of your mouth than fAther but not as much as bAd. Think of the sound you make
when you are screaming. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

