# why do the japanese reverse the "R" and "L" sounds?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-japanese-reverse-the-r-and-l-sounds/314773>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 29, 2005, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-japanese-reverse-the-r-and-l-sounds/314773 "2005-07-29T16:58:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2005, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-japanese-reverse-the-r-and-l-sounds/314773/21 "2005-08-02T19:48:14Z")

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Um, maybe John Mace is familiar with a non-Andalusian dialect of Spain? I was taught New World Spanish, which comes from Andalusian Spanish. The letters _b_ & _v_ are, I was told, equivalent in those dialects.

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**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, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-japanese-reverse-the-r-and-l-sounds/314773/22 "2005-08-02T19:56:02Z")

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> [@foolsguinea](#):
>
> Um, maybe John Mace is familiar with a non-Andalusian dialect of Spain? I was taught New World Spanish, which comes from Andalusian Spanish. The letters _b_ & _v_ are, I was told, equivalent in those dialects.

I’ve taken classes in Spanish phonetics and linguistics. I was taught this by my madrileño Spanish professor, who did mention that there are certain hypercorrectionalist speakers that create a distinction between \<b\> and \<v\>, but this is quite rare and a wholly artificial affectation. I’ve never run into such a thing. It’s certainly not the norm in any Spanish dialect. I’m far more familiar with peninsular Spanish than American Spanish, and like I said, I’ve never heard it done.

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**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, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-japanese-reverse-the-r-and-l-sounds/314773/23 "2005-08-03T00:31:13Z")

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> [@Excalibre](#):
>
> This is incorrect. The letters \<b\> and \<v\> are absolutely equivalent in Spanish orthography. They both represent one phoneme, /b/, which is realized as \*\* at the beginning of an utterance or after an [m] sound, and as [ß] in all other positions. \*\* is like an English \<b\>, while [ß] is a voiced bilabial fricative, which could be described as halfway between \*\* and [v]: make a \*\* sound but expel some air between your lips.
> 
> It may be that a few border dialects with Portuguese or Catalá maintain some distinction between \<b\> and \<v\>, as those languages both do, but this is speculation on my part; I’ve never heard that this is the case.

If I bump into my Spanish teacher, I’ll take it up with her… 🙂

You sound pertty sure of yourself on this, so I’ll stand corrected. Are you a native speaker, btw? If not, I’d be interested in hearing from a few speakers from different parts of the Spanish speaking world. When I hear someone say “_vaca_”, I don’t hear “_baca_”, with a hard “b” like “_banco_”, but maybe I’m prejudiced by knowing that it’s spelled with a “v”.

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**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2005, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-japanese-reverse-the-r-and-l-sounds/314773/24 "2005-08-03T04:02:51Z")

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> [@John Mace](#):
>
> If I bump into my Spanish teacher, I’ll take it up with her… 🙂
> 
> You sound pertty sure of yourself on this, so I’ll stand corrected. Are you a native speaker, btw? If not, I’d be interested in hearing from a few speakers from different parts of the Spanish speaking world. When I hear someone say “_vaca_”, I don’t hear “_baca_”, with a hard “b” like “_banco_”, but maybe I’m prejudiced by knowing that it’s spelled with a “v”.

When you hear someone say “vaca”, you hear /'ßa ka/. Easy to perceive that as a [v] if you’re not a native speaker. I’m not either, but I have a pretty solid accent, and as I’ve said, I’ve taken a few classes in Spanish linguistics.

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