Hi!
I just recently started learning Japanese, and while reading the pronunciation guide, I got a bit confused.
The guide states that in hiragana, a vowel sound followed by あいうえお indicates a long sound and gives two examples:
Can someone explain why こう is long in the second word, but not in the first one?
Hello!
If I am not mistaken, the long sound here is りょう instead of りょ !
The first expends the “o” sound, the second makes it stop shorter.
Same if it would be written りょうこ vs りょうこう.
The first こ would have a shorter “o” sound vs こう
It’s long in the first word too. Maybe they didn’t use the best example
Yes, I get that in the first example りょう is the long one, but I don’t understand why こう in the りょうこう is not as long as こう in the りょこう, at least in the audio example from the guide
Yeah, after listening I guess they wanted to show the emphasis on both actually 
What? I feel like no one is understanding each other.
I just mean that こう is long in the first word as well. They just didn’t underline it. They might have put more emphasis on the underlined portion but I meant it was a bad example because the word has two long vowels but they only chose to highlight one.
Ok, I think I understand what confused me. In the りょうこう こう sounds like koo (long ko), but in りょこう it sounds more like kou.
Is there a rule for that or is it just a quirk of this particular audio example?
Yeah, you basically got it, except Japanese doesn’t have “stress” like English. Basically, when you see anything like this (りょ, しょ, ひょ), these are glides, and so they are said together, as you know. The extra う in りょこ lengthens the glide, so when we parse the one at the end, we treat it as a lengthening of こ. When you see that りょこ case, that’s showing you that the glide has been cut short, so now the other vowel is not as long. Does that make sense? It’s kind of hard to explain without saying it out loud. (And my voice sounds terrible always, so I would rather not…)
Yeah they are just emphasizing it too much. You wouldn’t pronounce the u like that usually. Pretty scuffed audio example imo
You can listen to some forvo examples
Thank you, I think I got it. They wanted to emphasize こう in the りょこう, and that’s why it sounds like that. I checked in the Google Translate (if there is a better tool for that, please let me know), and it pronounces こう in both cases the same way (koo).
Sorry if I couldnt explain it the correct way! Your curiosity will carry you far, it’s nice to ask questions like this early on 