Eleanor Harz Jorden and Hamako Ito Chaplin recommend reading the first 10 chapters of Beginning JapanesePart 1 & Part 2 as it is coordinated with Reading Japanese. There is also an Audio Cassette you can buy which comes with the book.
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Syllables Consisting of Consonant + y + Vowel
Examine the following combinations:
キャ ギュ ショ チャ ビュ ピョ
The first katakana symbol in each group represents a syllable sonsisting of a consonant + i, and the second, a syllable consisting of y + a vowel (the only vowels possible are a, u, and o). In each case, the second symbol is written slightly smaller and lower (further right in vertical writing) than the surrounding symbols. Such combinations represent single syllables romanized as sonsonant + y + vowel.
Thus, ビヤ is equivalent to the romanized two-syllable sequence biya, but ビャ is equivalent to the romanized single syllable bya. This writing convention is used for traditional Japanese words as well as recent borrowings into the language.
"...one-fourth of all the characters used in modern Japanese occur in three-fourths of all the most frequently occurring words. This means that by concentrating on learning approximately 500 select characters, the student is assured of being able to read 75% of all the high-frequency words he will encounter in modern literature." - The Kanji Way to Japanese Language Power.
