Table 2.1. The Vowels
| a | central low vowel "ah" (unrounded) | "bother" |
| e | front lower mid vowel "eh" (unrounded) | "better" |
| i | front high vowel "ee" (unrounded) | "beetle" |
| o | back lower-mid vowel "oh" (rounded) | "bowl" |
| u | back high vowel "oo" (rounded) | "boot" |
When pronouncing a single vowel, separated by consonants or word boundaries from any other vowels, your pronunciation should be pure and constant. English vowels often have glides. For example, Ouxu "o" is not pronounced with a "w" sound at the end.
In a sequence of vowels, each vowel is a separate syllable. When two or more different vowels appear in a row, pronounce each one separately with a smooth glide between them. When two or more of the same vowel appear in a row, pronounce them as a single long vowel, about twice the duration of a normal vowel.
Sequences of vowels are common. The vocabulary is deliberately vowel-heavy. It's possible to construct long words that consist entirely of vowels, such as uieouauua, which means "in order to promise only rain". I like it that way.
No triple vowels occur in the dictionary. (The program that made up the word forms actually included one, taaa- for "bored", but I edited it by hand to taa-.) But triple vowels can occur in compound words, including inflected words.
You can't tell from the sound of a long vowel how many written vowels it may correspond to. "Ooo" sounds the same as "oo". That's OK. Unambiguity is not a design goal. In practice, confusion is rare.