Zengum! A little Engrish explanation, please
 

(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?

We used to know a Thai family who had been here for decades and also spoke perfect English, but the wife admitted to me once that she'd had to brute-force memorize which words had a "sh" sound and which ones had a "ch" sound based on their visual spelling--because while she had been taught how to form both sounds with her mouth, she still could not hear the difference. If she saw "shoes" or "choose" written, she knew which word was which, but if you said them out loud, she could only rely on context.

I think your conjecture is probably right, I just thought it was fascinating that a brain could completely lose the ability to hear certain sounds. I've read that babies start pruning neurons within the first few months, including those for phonemes they never hear.

"This old neuron? I only use that when I don't care what I hear."

Yeah, I asked him if there was a difference when she was reading aloud, but that was only a few hours ago via email, so I don't know the answer yet.

hmmmm. It's a well known situation about the L and R sounds. If you learn to hear and pronounce the difference before you are about 3 or 4, you're fine, but it is very hard after that. I've even heard of some parents getting surgery on their kids tongues (trimming the connection between the tongue and the floor of the mouth) to help them with this, which is XXXXing stupid because the difference is where you put the front of your tongue. As you and Clod say, it is to do with training your brain.

As to why your friend gets them consistently inverted, I don't know of any "official" explanation, but I think yours is a pretty good one.

I'll keep this in mind and if I learn anything, I'll get back to you.

Final word of advice: never ask a Japanese person to lend you a "lead pencil". Just say "pencil". :smack:

Neither should you ask them to wreck your election

My Japanese wife had no trouble with either sound. But she trained in English from an early age and could speak either language perfectly. For her, the problem came from reading... Japanese is totally different from English when it comes to writing and reading. It took her a while to switch gears and every once in a while she would slip in the Japanese character for something inadvertently.

My Mexican wife is nearly perfect in both Spanish and English but since the written characters are the same (almost) she has no trouble. But I know when she's been speaking Spanish for a prolonged period when she phrases English terms and they sound "off". Because she's thinking in Spanish and then translating to English and Spanish grammar is different. She took courses to drop her accents (both of them, Spanish and hick) when she went into broadcasting.

ok. maybe this video clip will help. starring, big sarge, zippyt, yeah, i'll be steaked to the ground i guess, and a number of other cellarites. either way, great clip! from the 80's movie up the creek!

watch at 5:05 for the japanese translation to engrish.

sarge, of course is the black guy in the platoon a little later! :D

sorry in advance for this, but do you know why Asians don't get Cataracts?






...




...They Plefer Rincolns.

Your in Uhmerika! Speak 'merkin!

I had trouble with "th" and "r"...had to go to speech therapy...oh the humanity!

pant

pant


wheeeze

Wouldn't that have been speech rethapy?


An old friend of mine never mastered the "th" sound. (Blonde, female, youngest child ... nevermind, move along ...).

Nevertheless, she has a PhD. Which she got by writing a thesis, or in her case, a fesis. Now the plural of thesis is theses (sounds "theess-ees"). So, when we took her out to dinner to celebrate her finishing her "fesis" and asked her what she was going to do next, she tried to reply "a couple of my friends have asked me to read their theses over summer".

:lol2:

Maybe it is a new form of fortune telling or something. :right:

I don't feel so bad about the torture I had to go frough to get fose sounds down wight now. Franks Zen!

BTW...I'm the youngest, what are you tryin to say about me?

(Oh and I'm not making fun of your friend, just reflecting on how much worse off I could have been)

Hey, I am a youngest too. My friend could get her way by asking childishly, so the behaviour was reinforced. Her two older sisters would set her up to ask for anything they wanted.

I was. She was nice and fairly bright but occasionally would fall into stupidity. One April first someone sent her a link to the Bonsai kittens website. She was well into organising a petition against the practice before someone explained... :lol:

She is now director of scientific and medical research at a major university institution. Probably getting paid twice what I am ... hmmmm...

Scatology?

Actually, I have a downunda/far east translation request for ZenGum (or casi, or Ali, or fishhook, or DN, etc.)

Was watching a program recently and the camera's point of view was from behind the front seats of a car being driven in Japan. This car had a manual transmission. The driver's side was on the right side, of course. My question is this: What is the shifting pattern for a right hand drive car? In America, first gear is (usually) at the upper left in the "H" pattern, and then it works its way to the right as you row through the gears.

Any help?

Old. It's called scatomancy. I don't think there are a lot of practitioners of the art these days, though.

Unless you count proctologists and GI specialists.

It's the same, although where reverse is depends on the car. also, the pedals do not change order.

Really? Driving a car like that must be really awkward - having to reach over the transmission hump to push the gas pedal.

I don't think I could do it.

order, not side

If you get the two confused, you're either fat or skinflint.

"Eingrish" reminds me of my days in Hong Kong with the British Military. What a great experience.

sounds like something the Brits would all be speaking now if it wasn't for the yanks in WWII ;)

Hell, we are all going to be saying it in Spanish in a few years....

<searching for my Roseta tapes>

What was great abotu the experience?

Post from the Department of Redundancy Department.

Gears are:
1st - top left
2nd - bottom left
3rd - top centre (yes, centRE)
4th - bottom centre
5th - top right
Reverse - usually bottom right.

Pedals:
Clutch - left
Brake - centre
Accelerator - right

We don't have a "gas" pedal because our cars run on "petrol".

The tricky thing is, the indicator is (usually) on the right of the steering column, and the windscreen wiper control is on the left. With imported cars, especially European models, this is often reversed, which can mess you up if you change from one car to another.

The real challenge, though, is the steering wheel. Because we're in the southern hemisphere, gyroscopic forces are reversed. So it is necessary to reverse the connection on the steering wheel, and turn it clockwise to go left and anti-clockwise to go right. This does confuse a lot of visiting tourists, but it is easy to remember if you think of it this way: in the northern hemisphere, the car goes the way the upper (i.e. northern) part of the steering wheel goes, and in the southern hemisphere, the car goes the way the lower (southern part of h wheel goes. Simple really.

:driving:

Don't listen to these jokers. I rented a stick shift in New Zealand, and it took about 10 seconds to adjust to the different layout, and after the first hour of driving, it was perfectly normal.

understandable. it's a shitty job

Glatt, dammit, shush! Someone's gotta troll around here.

Thank God. I ended up with a manual transmission rental when I was in Edinburgh. I survived the week with the car intact.