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?