I started a course in beginner Japanese, because it’s been a while and I wasn’t sure how difficult or easy the courses would be.
one of the vocabulary is “thank you”, and it sounds like
ありがとう (A RI GA TO U), but the spelling review marks that as wrong and says it should be ありがと (A RI GA TO).
Later I started the Japanese 1 course to see if it were more challenging and saw that it has “thank you” spelled as ありがとう (A RI GA TO U) just as the speaker sounds like she is saying it. I WASN’T incorrect in my spelling or hearing or memory of that word. The beginning level has it spelled incorrectly without the final u
I worry that a true beginner will learn the spelling without the long o-u on the end and have difficulty remembering the correct spelling with the long o-u later.