# Need A Simple Explanation For Asiatic Mispronunciation Of Rs and Ls **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 2, 2005, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264 "2005-08-02T05:10:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2005, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264/21 "2005-08-02T19:43:58Z")
> [@tiltypig](#): > > There’s some stuff about this on wikipedia: > > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard\_Mandarin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Mandarin) > > The alveolo-palatal consonants (x j q) are in complementary distribution (see minimal pair) with the alveolar consonants (s z c), retroflex consonants (sh zh ch), and velar consonants (g k h). As a result, some linguists prefer to classify x j q as allophones of one of the three other sets, commonly of the last one… > > (you need to follow the link to see the IPA symbols for each–and there’s a handy chart mapping pinyin to IPA) :: furrows his brows :: Hey! You’re right! Interesting. Thanks for the link. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2005, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264/22 "2005-08-02T19:47:07Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > [The IPA symbol](http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ipa.htm) for our nonce \ is a “c” with a cedilla … I should be more clear: Voiceless _palatal_ fricative = IPA “c” with a cedilla Voiceless _alveolo-palatal_ fricative = IPA “c” with a “curly-cue” ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2005, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264/23 "2005-08-02T20:07:15Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > One good way to figure out why Japanese pronounce Enlgish words the way they do is to try and spell out the English word using [Katakana](http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2048.html). You’ll find that there are some missing sounds, and lots of extra vowels. What extra vowels? Japanese doesn’t have any vowels that English doesn’t have, unless you count the final -n. In fact, I’d say English has more vowel sounds than Japanese (for example, Japanese has no equivalent to what we call the ‘schwa’ in English). ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2005, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264/24 "2005-08-02T20:11:55Z")
> [@Brain Wreck](#): > > What extra vowels? Japanese doesn’t have any vowels that English doesn’t have, unless you count the final -n. In fact, I’d say English has more vowel sounds than Japanese (for example, Japanese has no equivalent to what we call the ‘schwa’ in English). No … **John Mace** meant “vowels thrown into a given Engllish word to break up consonant clusters and facilitate pronunciation for native Japanese speakers”. Think more of “extra syllables”. The one-syllable English word “glass” comes out as three syllables for a Japanese speaker, whose native speech patterns dictate that a vowel come between the “g” and the “l”, and that a vowel ends the word. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2005, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264/25 "2005-08-02T23:57:48Z")
Yep, that’s what I meant. Sorry if it was confusing. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2005, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264/26 "2005-08-03T06:46:27Z")
This thing has been bugging me all day for some strange reason… The more I think about the American English pronuciation of the “r” sound, the odder it seems-- it’s not very similar to even its closest I-E language relatives (German, etc) much less other I-E languages like French or Spanish. In comparing the Japanese “r” sound with languages other than American English, perhaps that sound is closer to what that letter represents than it is to the “l” sound. And I specifically mention American English because that “r” sound is different even when compaed to the “r” sound in British English. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2005, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264/27 "2005-08-03T11:11:31Z")
Is that “R” as in “London”? No it’s “L” as in “Rome” was on the cover of a book about Japanese when I lived in Tokyo in 1991 ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2005, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264/28 "2005-08-03T14:00:37Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > because that “r” sound is different even when compaed to the “r” sound in British English. Only sometimes, like when it becomes a flapped r in “very.” ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2005, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264/29 "2005-08-03T14:19:37Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > The more I think about the American English pronuciation of the “r” sound, the odder it seems-- it’s not very similar to even its closest I-E language relatives (German, etc) much less other I-E languages like French or Spanish. You are correct – the “American English r”, known phonetically as a “voiced alveolar approximant”, is not common among the world’s languages. Many of the languages that do feature this sound are Australian Aboriginal languages. [Thought you might be interested in the blog entry below:](http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_tensor/2004/week35/) > [@](#): > > **R-Sounds** > A few weeks ago in the comments on this post, some Linguaphiles were discussing the various r-sounds—approximants, trills, flaps, fricatives, etc.—that occur in the world’s languages. This got me wondering what the most common r-sound is. As it happens, last year for a phonology project I imported the UPSID database (which I’ve mentioned before) into Access, so I can quickly write SQL queries on its contents: the phoneme inventories of 451 genetically diverse languages. > > First, a word of explanation about UPSID’s format. UPSID distinguishes phonemes using a set of binary features like [fric] (fricative) and [vd] (voiced). Since the phoneme inventories of the languages in UPSID were collected from printed sources with varying levels of detail, sometimes the features described in one language are less specific than in others. In particular, instead of simply having two features for dental and alveolar, UPSID has three: [dent] for dental, [alv] for alveolar, and [unspdent]. This last feature is short for “unspecified dental”, and it’s used when a source did not make clear if a particular phoneme or series of phonemes are dental or alveolar. It’s necessary to understand this, because some [+unspdent] phonemes show up in the results below. > > Here are the language counts for some common r-like sounds. In each row of the table, I’ve included a description of the phoneme, the IPA version, the UPSID character code, and the count of languages that contain it. (For the [unspdent] phonemes, I’ve left out the IPA version, since there’s no way to mark that.) > > _(See link for chart … formatting didn’t survive c&p – b)_ > > The alveolar/dental trill is the most common of these sounds, with 155 languages having at least one of them (there are no languages with more than one of them). The alveolar/dental flap comes in second, with 118 languages. The approximant r-sounds (which include the English variant) are found in only 47 languages, and the uvular fricative and trill occur in only 22 and 4 languages, respectively. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2005, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264/30 "2005-08-03T14:38:52Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Only sometimes, like when it becomes a flapped r in “very.” I knew I should have been clearer… I was thinking about the Queen’s English; ie, literally how the Queen and her cohert would pronounce it. Does she ever pronounce “r” like someone from Texas? 🙂 **bordelond** : Interesting article. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2005, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264/31 "2005-08-03T14:44:56Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > I knew I should have been clearer… I was thinking about the Queen’s English; ie, literally how the Queen and her cohert would pronounce it. Does she ever pronounce “r” like someone from Texas? 🙂 Are you thinking of word-intial r’s (as in _red_), or r’s that follow vowels (as in _card_, _bore_, _butter_)? IIRC, the former is pretty much identical for most varieties of both American and British English. You can, however, expect some “Spanish-style” tapped r’s from the English speakers of Jamaica and Belize. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2005, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264/32 "2005-08-03T17:48:31Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > Are you thinking of word-intial r’s (as in _red_), or r’s that follow vowels (as in _card_, _bore_, _butter_)? IIRC, the former is pretty much identical for most varieties of both American and British English. Yes, even the initial “r” sound gets trilled a bit when the Queen is speaking. But most Brits do pronounce at least the initial “r” pretty much like Americans. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-simple-explanation-for-asiatic-mispronunciation-of-rs-and-ls/315264.md?page=1)