A Few Words On Pronunciation
Track 2
I'd like to introduce you to the pronunciation guide outlines in the following chart. There aren't too many characters that are different from the standard alphabet, but just so you'll be familiar with them,
look at the chart.
It shows eight tense vowels and six lax vowels and semivowels.
Tense Vowels?
Lax Vowels?
In some books, tense vowels are called long and lax vowels are called short.Since you will be learning how to lengthen vowels when they come before a voiced consonant, it would be confusing to say that hen has a long, short vowel. It is more descriptive to say that it has a lax vowel that is doubled or lengthened. 
Although this may look like a lot of characters to learn, there are really only four new ones: æ, ä, ə, and ü. Under Tense Vowels, you'll notice that the vowels that say their own name simply have a line over them:
[ā], [ē], [ ī ], [ō], [ū].
There are three other tense vowels.
First, [ä], is pronounced like the sound you make when the doctor wants to see your throat, or when you loosen a tight belt and sit down in a soft chair—aaaaaaaah!
Next, you'll find [æ], a combination of the tense vowel [ä] and the lax vowel [ε]. It is similar to the noise that a goat or a lamb makes.
The last one is [æo], a combination of [æ] and [o].
This is a very common sound, usually written as ow or ou in words like down or round. A tense vowel requires you to use a lot of facial muscles to produce it. If you say [ē], you must stretch your lips back;
for [ū] you must round your lips forward;
for [ä] you drop your jaw down;
for [æ] you will drop your jaw far down and back;
for [ā] bring your lips back and drop your jaw a bit;
for [ ī ] drop your jaw for the ah part of the sound and pull it back up
for the ee part; and for[ō] round the lips, drop the jaw and pull back up into [ū]. An American [ō] is really [ōū].
Now you try it. Repeat after me. [ē], [ū], [ā], [æ], [ä], [ī], [ō].
A lax vowel, on the other hand, is very reduced. In fact, you don't need to move your face at all. You only need to move the back of your tongue and your throat. These sounds are very different from most other languages.
Under Lax Vowels, there are four reduced vowel sounds, starting with the Greek letter epsilon [ε], pronounced eh; [i] pronounced ih, and [ü] pronounced ü, which is a combination of ih and uh, and the schwa, [ə], pronounced uh—the softest, most reduced, most relaxed sound that we
can produce. It is also the most common sound in English. The semivowels are the American R(pronounced er, which is the schwa plus R) and the American L (which is the schwa plus L).
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