Infantulus - Alphabet & Pronunciation - Vowels (con'd)

Here are the first two questions in the first level:

Q: What are the Latin vowels?

a, e, i, o, u, and y. The rest are consonants.

Q: How do they sound when short?
a sounds like the “ah” in aha,
e like the “eh” in met,
i like the “i” in bit,
o like the “oh” in omit,
u like the “oo” in foot, and
y like the “y” in Syrius. [like German ü; form lips for oo but say ee].

These were the sounds, though not the exact mnemonics, I learned when I first began learning Latin through Karen Moh's Latin's Not So Tough! (http://www.greeknstuff.com/) workbook series a decade ago, when my elementary-age children and I first began. (A decade? *Sigh*, tempus fugit, time flies, or literally, time flees.)

You should learn the answers to these questions exactly as written here in order to pass your oral examination and become a teacher of this level. And, to pass to examiner status, you must also know the questions exactly.

Yy is an interesting oddity. Though rare, it is one of those things strange enough that one must spend, seemingly, more time learning it than will ever be spent using it. Hans Orberg's Lingua Latina, for example, has you practice saying Aegyptus, Egypt, and Syria on the first page of Familia Romana, and the whole first conversation of his companion book, Colloquia Personarum, has the children discussing how to pronounce the same two words. My students enjoyed learning how to make the sound - a little bit to distraction, actually. But it's fun.