Why do Japanese confuse L's with R's

[Duo]

I've been wondering for this for a while. Why is it that Japanese usually pronounce the L in English words as an R? Could someone elaborate ?

 

[den4]

The L and R sounds very similar in Japanese, because there is no "letter/character" in the hiragana/katakana that can distinguish between them. The same goes with the H and F sound, and this will create confusion sometimes when you sometimes hear a nihonjin say: Mt. Fuji or Mt. Huji.
I'm sure others in this forum will give better examples, because I don't know anything....

 

[Glenn]

Haha, though that was pretty good, den4. The Japanese actually don't have either an "l" or an "r" sound, they are kind of the same, with a "d" sound mixed in there to really throw you off. The way the Japanese "r" (ra gyﾃｴ) was explained to me was that it is like pronouncing "l" and "r" at the same time.

Also of note, in Mandarin Chinese the "r" sound is the same as the Japanese "r," although there is a "l" sound (e.g. lai, liao, liu, and le).

 

[RockLee]

yeah....it cracks me up still...my friend always makes mistakes with the R and L like plactice -> practice

 

[Lina Inverse]

There's still more like that, like "shi" and "si" being the same in Japanese, making it very difficult for some to distinguish between "she" and "sea"

 

[Glenn]

Yeah, there are a whole slew of them, actually. It's due to Japanese not having nearly as many sounds as English.

 

[Duo]

My Japanese friend in high school had no problem with English and French pronounciation. So I guess it's something that just requires a lil practice.

 

[Glenn]

I would imagine that it requires a lot of practice and immersion. Also, different people pick up languages and sounds with different levels of ease, and some people will do their best to sound like a native speaker, while most will just come close. The people who just come close are most likely just thinking that if they are understood, then everything is alright. It takes a pretty anal person to try to perfect each new sound of a foreign language.

 

[RockLee]

It takes a pretty anal person

Anal????you mean verbal/oral ????

 

[Glenn]

I'm not sure whether that was a joke. :?

 

[nekosasori]

I was about to say it takes an aural person to get the sounds right. Also, it helps if you're exposed to phonemes as early in life as possible - as one grows older, it becomes increasingly difficult and sometimes impossible to tell apart sounds that hadn't been part of your memories whilst younger. That's why some Japanese speakers are actually worse than 50-50 at guessing whether they hear an l-word or r-word. The ra-gyou is between the two...

 

[Lina Inverse]

I was about to say it takes an aural person to get the sounds right. Also, it helps if you're exposed to phonemes as early in life as possible - as one grows older, it becomes increasingly difficult and sometimes impossible to tell apart sounds that hadn't been part of your memories whilst younger. That's why some Japanese speakers are actually worse than 50-50 at guessing whether they hear an l-word or r-word. The ra-gyou is between the two...

That's some part of it, but not too much. It hugely varies from person to person. While one person is very proficient with languages (even without early exposure), another person might have simply no talent there, even if he had early exposure.
So, the early exposure can help a little bit, but not more. It still mostly depends on the person's ability.

 

[Glenn]

Yes, talent is important (and being an aural person would be someone who is talented at picking up sounds), but the less aural you are, the more anal you would have to be to get the sounds just right.

 

[bossel]

Also, it helps if you're exposed to phonemes as early in life as possible - as one grows older, it becomes increasingly difficult and sometimes impossible to tell apart sounds that hadn't been part of your memories whilst younger.

The earlier the better! If babies are exposed to sounds that are not common in their mother tongue, they can distinguish these sounds much better later in life. But the foreign sounds need to come from live persons, not from some media.

Social interaction plays key role in how infants learn language, studies show

So, it's good to have some foreign friends if you have a baby.

 

[Glenn]

So, it's good to have some foreign friends if you have a baby.

Well, only if you want your baby to be multilingual.