Kaze Uta Budo Kai Forum Archive

The first thing you need to know about any language is what sounds are available in that language. This is why your High School teacher made you say your name in Spanish/French/Latin, whatever you took. A language's map starts with it's sounds and getting used to those sounds will bring you a long way to understanding spoken Japanese, and being able to make yourself understandable.

http://www.tokyowithkids.com/fyi/hiragana_chart.html

The above is a link to the hiragana chart wihch contains all the sounds, with links to .wav files for the pronunciation of each sound. Refer to it often, and use it to define what you hear when you hear spoken Japanese, because the basis for romanized Japanese is in that chart. You don't have to memorize it, just be familiar enough with the sounds that you can break any Japanese word down to its basics: it's sounds. Everything else flows from there.