I've been thinking about it, and I think a lot of my pronunciations have been influenced by my japanese class...
Example:
Here are 5 japanases syllables:
ka-------------pronounced 'Kah'
ki--------------pronounced 'Key' (long 'e' sound)
ku-------------pronounced 'Koo' (oo sound, like in cookie)
ke-------------pronounced 'Keh'
ko-------------pronounced 'Koh' (like the first syllable of coin).
The vowel sounds remain the same for the most part, no matter what consonant sound is put before it. The only consant sounds they have is
k,t,s,m,n,p,b,g,j,h,w,y,and l/r (the l/r is the only weird one. When romanized, they are written with r's. Pronounced, it's kind of a mix between the 'l' sound and the 'r' sound) Some of the consonant with vowels change too... like si. It's prounounced 'she' not 'si' (think spanish for any of you who are familiar)
Also, y only has ya,yo,yu and w only has wa.
I may have missed a few of the consonants, but I think you guys get the gist.
um... yah. Sorry if I took the topic off a bit.