In a native speaker's mental model, are long vowel sounds - for example the おう
in 「教室」 the ああ in 「唐揚げ」, the えい in 「先生」 or just 「いい」 (I chose these examples
quite deliberately, since they represent fairly different "categories" of long
vowels; please consider them all) - a long vowel sound or two vowel sounds
following each other? In other words, when they say a long vowel, are they
deliberately saying one long vowel sound or two of them directly following
each other?

Does it perhaps depend on which vowel it is? Does it depend on the word?
Perhaps neither, or something else entirely? This is something I've been
wondering for a while now, and I feel knowing the answer would help my latent
understanding of the language and pronunciation.

I realize there's probably no definite answer, at least not without conducting
some scientific research, but having the input of some native speakers or
someone who's talked to native speakers about this would be invaluable.
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pronunciation phonology
Do native speakers think of prolonged vowels as one long vowel, or two vowel sounds following each other?
I had a specific experience with 聞く, when it's in て形. So, 聞いて. I used to say
"kii-te" emphasizing the length of the vowel. But then, a native told me to
separate it, so I now pronounce it "ki-i-te".

It seems that it depends on the word for whether you separate or not. I've
noticed with verbs, however, that you separate since, I guess, it's to
distinguish the fact it's being conjugated. With nouns, it seems you just put
emphasis on the long vowel part when speaking at normal pace. So, in other
words, using 先生, you would say, "sen-SEI" rather than "SEN-sei."

...if that makes any sense. Anyway, hopefully my experience helped you, and if
you have any further questions, feel free to, well, 聞いてください, haha.
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> When they say a long vowel, are they deliberately saying one long vowel
> sound or two of them directly following each other?

I think there is no convention, as long as there is no risk of
misunderstanding.

委員長{いいんちょう} may be pronounced with two slightly separated いいsounds or a long
いー.

大山椒魚{オオサンショウウオ} (giant salamander) may be pronounced like おーさんしょーうお,
おおさんしょーうお, etc (nothing that varies too much from this will be understood as
anything else than 'giant salamander').

> Does it perhaps depend on which vowel it is? Does it depend on the word?
> Perhaps neither, or something else entirely?

I think most on-yomi readings, in the same kanji, do not use two vowel sounds
following each other. 栄養 would sound just like えーよー, 修正 would be しゅーせー. The
sound often slightly goes to the sound of the second vowel but it is
continuous (no perceivable 'pause' between vowel sounds). There is no obvious
need to emphasize the vowel sounds like え **い** よ **う** or しゅ **う** せ **い**
because saying like that is enough.
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I'm a native speaker. When you tell a native Japanese speaker to say these
words veeeeery slowly, they would say:

  * きょ、う、し、つ。 （or きょ、お、し、つ。）
  * せ、ん、せ、い。 （or せ、ん、せ、え。）
  * か、ら、あ、げ。
  * こ、ん、ぴゅ、う、た、あ。 （コンピューター）

And if you ask "How many 'sounds' are there in those words?", they would count
using their fingers, and say 4, 4, 4 and 6, respectively. So this means so-
called "long vowels" are fundamentally two separate sounds in native speakers'
minds.

Of course it doesn't mean we _deliberately_ say two vowels in succession in
everyday conversations. We do it simply unconsciously.

Reference: [Japanese _On_ (or
morae)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_\(Japanese_prosody\))

Japanese morae system and English syllables are so much different that it took
me years to understand why English 'strike' is one "sound" (syllable) to
English speakers, while it was clearly five sounds (す、と、ら、い、く) to me.
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> _[W]hen they say a long vowel, are they deliberately saying one long vowel
> sound or two of them directly following each other?_

If this is about [phonology](/questions/tagged/phonology "show questions
tagged 'phonology'"), as the tag indicates, the answer will be: _**two, or
neither**_ (at least in Standard Japanese).

**It's merely two same vowels adjacent by chance when in between two words, or
between word stems and inflections**. In your examples, 唐揚げ apparently
consists of two words (morphemes) _kara_ + _age_ , thus the two cannot be
merged into one in a speaker's mind. いい, although being short, is made of _i_
(stem < _yo_ ) + _i_ (adj. ending) and follows it too.

Meanwhile, **it's a short vowel followed by a lengthener, when seen inside an
indivisible word**. 教室 and 先生 in your examples fall under this (have nothing
to do with orthographical spellings, just to be sure). By "lengthener" I mean,
we recognize a prolonging phoneme //ʀ// as one of [moraic
phonemes](http://www.nihongokyoshi.co.jp/manbow/manbow.php?id=749&TAB=1) of
Japanese (the rest is, moraic nasal //ɴ// a.k.a. ん and geminator //ꞯ//* a.k.a
っ, as far as widely accepted among researchers). //ʀ// has no sound value by
itself, but can make previous vowel a
[mora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_%28linguistics%29) longer. Phonemic
representations of 教室 and 先生 are respectively //kyoʀsitu// and //seɴseʀ//.

So what makes you happier if we assume a //ʀ// instead of a long vowel? I
think [this page](http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/ts/language/phoneme.html) I found
makes a fairly neat summary on the advantages of //ʀ// analysis. It says (with
adapted terms):

>   1. When you transpose morae in wordplay, 貧乏【びんぼう】 "poor" with first and
> third mora interchanged should be ボンビー, which is only accountable if the
> word was //biɴboʀ//; if it were //biɴboo//, the result would be //boɴbio//
> ボンビオ.
>   2. A series in demonstrative paradigm こう ("in this way"), そう ("in your/its
> way"), ああ ("in that way"), どう ("how") would be more consistent represented
> in //koʀ//, //soʀ//, //aʀ//, //doʀ//, rather than simply a long version of
> each vowel.
>   3. (omitted; it's about distinguishing two short vowels and one long
> vowel.)
>

cf. the Wiktionary entry of
[里親](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%87%8C%E8%A6%AA) ("foster parent"):

> Compound of _sato_ ‎(“village”) and _oya_ ‎(“parent”). Often cited in
> contrast to _satōya_ ‎(“sugar dealer”) in discussion of the phonological
> distinction between long vowels and geminate vowels.

* * *

*It's a small capital Q, which has only recently been included in Unicode.
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