Zengum! A little Engrish explanation, please

[monster]

(and clodfobble and other sound, Japanese and/or pronounciation experts ....and anyone with 2c to spare...)


for my ceramics teacher.



His Japanese girlfriend has been in the States for 20odd years and can pronounce both L and R perfectly. She can just about hear the difference if she is concentrating. But generally, when she speaks, she almost invariably uses the wrong consonant when she needs an L or R.

We have been unable to find an "official" explanation of why she might do this, just the usual: neither sound exists in Japanese, but there is one that's sort of halfway between the two. But that doesn't explain why she (and other Japanese people -I have found several examples) would use the wrong one so frequently if able to pronounce both.

Here is my conjecture: Just because she can differentiate between the two and can pronounce them both properly, doesn't mean she does in general speech. I think maybe she uses the Japanese inbetween sound for all of them, and the western ear just hears it as "wrong" so assigns the wrong consonant to what they heard. So say the word is "locker", the Japanese person says "*ocker" (where * is the inbetween sound), and the western ear hears "*ocker" and so interprets "rocker" because they know it damn well wasn't "locker".


Did I get it right? Is there academic work on this? How many jokes will we get through before someone calls the cellar Lacist?

[Clodfobble]

We used to know a Thai family who had been here for decades and also spoke perfect English, but the wife admitted to me once that she'd had to brute-force memorize which words had a "sh" sound and which ones had a "ch" sound based on their visual spelling--because while she had been taught how to form both sounds with her mouth, she still could not hear the difference. If she saw "shoes" or "choose" written, she knew which word was which, but if you said them out loud, she could only rely on context.

I think your conjecture is probably right, I just thought it was fascinating that a brain could completely lose the ability to hear certain sounds. I've read that babies start pruning neurons within the first few months, including those for phonemes they never hear.

[footfootfoot]

"This old neuron? I only use that when I don't care what I hear."

[monster]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

If she saw "shoes" or "choose" written, she knew which word was which, but if you said them out loud, she could only rely on context.

Yeah, I asked him if there was a difference when she was reading aloud, but that was only a few hours ago via email, so I don't know the answer yet.

[ZenGum]

hmmmm. It's a well known situation about the L and R sounds. If you learn to hear and pronounce the difference before you are about 3 or 4, you're fine, but it is very hard after that. I've even heard of some parents getting surgery on their kids tongues (trimming the connection between the tongue and the floor of the mouth) to help them with this, which is XXXXing stupid because the difference is where you put the front of your tongue. As you and Clod say, it is to do with training your brain.

As to why your friend gets them consistently inverted, I don't know of any "official" explanation, but I think yours is a pretty good one.

I'll keep this in mind and if I learn anything, I'll get back to you.

Final word of advice: never ask a Japanese person to lend you a "lead pencil". Just say "pencil".

[footfootfoot]

Neither should you ask them to wreck your election

[BrianR]

My Japanese wife had no trouble with either sound. But she trained in English from an early age and could speak either language perfectly. For her, the problem came from reading... Japanese is totally different from English when it comes to writing and reading. It took her a while to switch gears and every once in a while she would slip in the Japanese character for something inadvertently.

My Mexican wife is nearly perfect in both Spanish and English but since the written characters are the same (almost) she has no trouble. But I know when she's been speaking Spanish for a prolonged period when she phrases English terms and they sound "off". Because she's thinking in Spanish and then translating to English and Spanish grammar is different. She took courses to drop her accents (both of them, Spanish and hick) when she went into broadcasting.

[plthijinx]

ok. maybe this video clip will help. starring, big sarge, zippyt, yeah, i'll be steaked to the ground i guess, and a number of other cellarites. either way, great clip! from the 80's movie up the creek!

[plthijinx]

watch at 5:05 for the japanese translation to engrish.

[plthijinx]

sarge, of course is the black guy in the platoon a little later!

[jimhelm]

sorry in advance for this, but do you know why Asians don't get Cataracts?






...




...They Plefer Rincolns.

[morethanpretty]

Your in Uhmerika! Speak 'merkin!

[morethanpretty]

I had trouble with "th" and "r"...had to go to speech therapy...oh the humanity!

[BigV]

pant

pant


wheeeze

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by morethanpretty

I had trouble with "th" and "r"...had to go to speech therapy...oh the humanity!

Wouldn't that have been speech rethapy?


An old friend of mine never mastered the "th" sound. (Blonde, female, youngest child ... nevermind, move along ...).

Nevertheless, she has a PhD. Which she got by writing a thesis, or in her case, a fesis. Now the plural of thesis is theses (sounds "theess-ees"). So, when we took her out to dinner to celebrate her finishing her "fesis" and asked her what she was going to do next, she tried to reply "a couple of my friends have asked me to read their theses over summer".



Maybe it is a new form of fortune telling or something.