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From: Avi Jacobson <avi_jaco@netvision.net.il>
Subject: Re: The English "R" for Germans
Message-ID: <3141A9BE.18B0@netvision.net.il>
Date: Sat, 09 Mar 1996 07:54:39 -0800
Organization: Audio Lingual Consultant
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Einar Hgseth wrote:
> 
> And the Japanese cannot pronounce R at all, but use L instead,
> like in this joke:
> The american abassadors wife asked the japanese prime
> minister "How often do you have elections in Japan?"
> The japanese said "Evely molning, Madam, evely molning"
> ;-)

I'll reserve judgment on the joke, but it has no basis in reality:

Japanese *can* pronounce an acceptable r -- certainly the r in "very".  
The Japanese /r/ phoneme has several allophones, one of which is very 
close to the tapped "r" often heard in "very" in England.  They have some 
trouble with [l], less trouble with [/l] (velarized or "dark" l).

The Chinese, on the other hand, tend to pronounce [l] for [r], though not 
post-vocalically as in "morning" (where the "r" would simply be dropped).

The "Japanese R's and L's myth" takes several forms:

"There is no R in Japanese." (wrong)
"Japanese cannot pronounce an R." (wrong)
"Japanese say R for L and L for R." (wrong)

All of these have as much accuracy as that other famous urban myth about 
Japanese -- the one that falls squarely in the field of gynecology.

-- 
Avi Jacobson, Audio Lingual Consultant      | When an idea is wanting,
Home Page:                                  | a word can always be
  http://www.netvision.net.il/php/avi_jaco  | found to take its place.
email: avi_jaco@netvision.net.il            |     -- Goethe

