Five vowels, and they never change. a as in father, i as in machine, u as in flute, e as in bed, o as in for. A macron — ō, ū — is the same vowel held twice as long, not a different sound.
There is no stress. Every syllable gets roughly equal time. The commonest English error is not a wrong sound, it is stamping on one syllable. Mu-sa-shi, three even beats — not MU-sa-shi.
地 chi — earth. 水 sui — water. 火 ka — fire. 風 fū — wind. 空 kū — void.
住 jū — to dwell, to abide, to stop on a thing. The name of the failure.
無心 mushin — no-mind. Not blankness: a mind with nothing lodged in it.
不動 fudō — immovable, in the sense of not stopping rather than not moving.
拍子 hyōshi — rhythm, timing, the interval.
型 kata — a fixed form, learned by watching, repeated for years.
先 sen — the initiative.
間 ma — the interval, the gap, the space between.
観見二眼 kan-ken no futatsu no me — the two eyes. 観 perception is strong; 見 sight is weak.
有構無構 u-kō mu-kō — there is a guard; there is no guard.
巌の身 iwao no mi — the body of a rock.
石火之機 sekka no ki — the spark-stone interval.
免許皆伝 menkyo kaiden — full transmission. The school has nothing further to hand down.