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Overcoming L/R for Japanese -- possible? | ||
Tags: Pronunciation | Japanese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6152 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 17 of 26 18 July 2010 at 1:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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I understand that -
1) Asian languages have a kind of a "combination" L & R sound that is somewhat "between" the English sound of both. 2) Asian adults can have a hard time pronouncing English Rs and Ls, since their brains are more or less "wired" without them, based on the sounds that they heard in their "learn as a child does" youth. But what I really don't get is why spoken Rs and Ls are so hard for Asian people to differentiate when listening to English. Just because they don't use those sounds? English speakers can sure distinguish hearing the rolled Spanish "R," or the gutteral French "R," even if they can't speak them very well. I mean, don't bird-watchers easily know which type of bird is "speaking" from hearing the sounds of the chirping, and those sure aren't native English sounds. I don't get why R and L would be hard to distinguish upon hearing them just because they're not used in Japanese. Edited by TerryW on 18 July 2010 at 1:38am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5176 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 18 of 26 18 July 2010 at 1:56am | IP Logged | |||||
Actually, this is typical of Japanese, not of Asian languages in general. Most Asian languages have a typical L that they can easily produce, but some languages lack the complex syllabic structure that English has, making L and R harder to produce.
Can you hear the difference between Louis and lui in French? Between deux heures and douze heures? Most non-natives struggle with those -- and yes, it is "just" because they don't use those sounds. It might be puzzling to see the difficulty Japanese face with R and L, but it's a linguistic reality. We can claim all we want that it should be easy, but 120+million Japanese will tell you it isn't. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6234 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 19 of 26 18 July 2010 at 2:06am | IP Logged | |||||
There are sounds that your language doesn't have but which you can easily tell apart, and sounds which your language doesn't have which are easy to confuse. Most English speakers would not do well in distinguishing the five types of 'm' sound found in one dialect of an obscure language - or even the three 'z' sounds in Polish, or the tones in Mandarin or Cantonese.
Experience helps; lacking that, I'd certainly mix up some birds. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sei Diglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5736 days ago 178 posts - 191 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Japanese | Message 20 of 26 18 July 2010 at 3:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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Besides what Arekkusu and Volte said, there's little else I can add without going into too many explanations and details. If you do want to search more about this, I'd recommend searching for Auditory Discrimination or even Perception. This is something Speech and Language Pathologists (at least in Portugal) work A LOT with.
If you go into Google Scholar you might also find some articles relating to language learning specifically. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6152 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 21 of 26 18 July 2010 at 3:17am | IP Logged | |||||
Donno, I'd need to hear 'em! I mean, except for context, I wouldn't be able to distinguish the English "To / Too / Two" or "Jean / Gene" or "Past / Passed," etc., but I assume those French pairs are pronounced differently from each other? I'm guessing they are, or that 2 hour / 12 hour thing could be a real problem in Paris. ;-) It'd be cool if somebody could put up some authentic audio of those so we can play Edited by TerryW on 18 July 2010 at 3:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6744 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 22 of 26 18 July 2010 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I teach English in Japan, and my classes place a heavy emphasis on pronunciation (I specialized in phonology as a university Linguistics major, so it's an area of particular interest to me).
The /l/, once you explain it to them, is easy for them to produce. The /r/ is very difficult. In school, they learn to curl the tip of the tongue back to make the /r/ sound, which is easy for them to do, but ends up sounding like /l/ if it touches the roof of the mouth to any extent (which is difficult to avoid when moving your tongue like that). So it's imperative that they learn to move their tongue as a native speaker does, which involves pulling the sides of your tongue into the back of the throat (that's the best I can describe it in writing!) and NOT putting any strength into the tip of the tongue (i.e. not curling it upwards - it should just naturally follow the rest of the tongue back). What I find is that even when the students understand the movements involved and can picture my tongue position clearly in their minds, many of them (maybe around 60%) physically have trouble producing it themselves because they have never used the muscles in that way. After a few weeks of drills in front of a mirror, even these students are able to pronounce it quite well, though. Interestingly, even being able to produce them beautifully does not mean they're able to hear the distinction. It seems that the latter comes much, much later than the former. As I said, all our students can produce /l/ and /r/ after just a few weeks, but we only have one or two students who are able to hear the distinction to a high degree of accuracy. This also reflects the experiences of my boyfriend, whose ability to produce and differentiate these sounds I tested using minimal pairs such as /grass/ and /glass/. When he pronounced them, I was able to correctly identify which one he was saying 100% of the time, but when he heard me pronounce them, he could only identify the right one about 70-80% of the time. I remember reading a study at university about the ability of American and Japanese babies to distinguish /r/ and /l/. They tested it by playing a recording that sounded like 'la la la la RA la la la', and showing an image of a teddy bear dancing or something like that on a TV screen every time the 'ra' came up. The babies who could hear the distinction would perk up and look at the TV expectantly whenever they heard a 'ra', while those who could not would have no such reaction. Both American and Japanese babies were able to make the distinction before the age of 1 year. I believe it was as early as 15 months that the Japanese babies started to be unable to make the distinction. Those of you who swear that the distinction is common sense and as clear as day, you should see if you can distinguish some of the Korean consonants like /g/ vs. /k/ (I know almost nothing about Korean, but I think I read somewhere that these sounds actually correspond more closely to unaspirated and aspirated /k/?) Even as a trained linguist I was banging my head against the wall trying to hear the difference, but to Koreans the distinction is clear as day, and these sounds distinguish meaning in their language just as /r/ and /l/ do in ours. By the way, for those curious about the Japanese /r/ sound, it's somewhat similar to a 'tap' (like the Spanish single 'r', or the sound in the middle of American English 'better'). To produce an /l/, all they have to do is take this sound and move the tongue further up front, but hopefully you can see for yourself how completely different it is from the English /r/. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5176 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 23 of 26 18 July 2010 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Very interesting post. While we usually say that they lose or have lost the ability to make the distinction, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that they have actually acquired the ability to consider both sounds as a single one. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6744 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 24 of 26 19 July 2010 at 1:26am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for that! I see what you mean. By the way, I couldn't find the original study online, but here is an article about the study, which also might provide some insight as to why speakers of different native tongues perceive sounds differently. Edited by Lucky Charms on 19 July 2010 at 1:29am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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