Japanese: 7–10 Sequence / Levels 7 and 8 / Understanding / Systems of language
Content description
Recognise and use features of the Japanese sound system, including pitch, accent, rhythm and intonation
Elaborations
understanding the system of Japanese sound combinations, that Japanese has five vowels and that a vowel can be attached to all consonants except ‘ん’
accurately pronouncing all combinations of hiragana and katakana, including voiced and unvoiced forms and all combined sounds (contractions and blends)
understanding that the sounds of hiragana and katakana are identical even though the associated scripts are different
recognising that in the copula desu and the verb suffix masu, the ‘u’ is devoiced in normal speech
using available combinations of katakana to experiment with the Japanese pronunciation of loan words, for example, レストラン
recognising the basic unit of sound in Japanese (‘mora’: モーラ or 拍), for example, こんにちは has five moras
becoming familiar with the rhythm of Japanese, recognising the concept of the ‘foot’ (フット) as the minimum unit of rhythm, and that one foot in Japanese consists of two moras, for example, ごちそうさま is pronounced as a three-foot word
