Why do Chinese people pronounce their "l's" like "r's"?

Question

For example, when I asked this Chinese woman at the front desk of a hotel for subway directions, she said: "Go to City Hall and take brue rine to Market Street. Then take orange rine to Stadium."

Answer 1

Don't really agree with any of the previous answers. There is an R and an L sound in Chinese. So, that's not the real reason. The real reason is that Chinese schools go by a pronunciation guide that is (in my opinion) completely counter-intuitive. I don't want to go into to much detail, but one of its many flaws is that there is no unique symbol for the "r" sound. Instead, the "r" sound shares the same symbol used to denote a long sound (Literally translated from Chinese. I know that probably doesn't make sense.). So, everytime Chinese people see ":", which can mean a number of different things, they take it to mean there's an "r" sound. It's been ages since I took middle school English (in China), but I vaguely remember something being odd about how they denote the "L" sound too. The other issue is that most English teachers learn to speak from these phonetic guides. So, it gets taught wrong in classrooms. (I once got into an argument, because my English teacher insisted panda was pronounced "pander". Thing is: according to our text book... she was right.)

Answer 2

I know, I don't know why they say it is the Chinese. They can pronounce L's. A lot of them have L's in their names. The Japanese, on the other hand, don't have the character "L". I guess since they are all Asian, people assume it's the same. People are ignorant.

Answer 3

Actually, it would be more "r" sounding "l" (example Brew->Blew)

It is local accent. As long as the message gets through, the objective of the communication is complete successfully.

Without the accent, you'll probably feel like you are in China Town somewhere in your home country, and not China.

By the way, you did take the BLUE LINE and then the ORANGE LINE, didn't you?

One additional note (and this left a lasting impression on me):
I was telling an Englishman (he's from London) that American English is easier to understand and guess what he replied? "They don't speak English! Their English is terrible". Try saying "semi-final" in American Engish and the Briton English.... Is it "Semy" or "Semee"? It's all about accent.

Answer 4

A person begins learning to pronounce the words of his language as a tiny infant. In a couple of years he can pronounce each sound perfectly.
Sadly, other languages have sounds that are entirelly different. Those sounds can't be made if not started at a very early age.
The gutteral sounds of German are very difficult. The nasal sounds of French are impossible for many. Roller R"s are tough for some, etc etc.

Answer 5

First off, the lady at the desk was probably Japanese, not Chinese. The Chinese language is full of "L" sounds but no "R"s. With Japanese, it's the other way around. Linguistic divergence or making ethnic points? Who knows.

Answer 6

They have an L sound in Chinese. I do not know why they pronouce it that way. Maybe it is written wrong phonetically in their English dictionaries. Ask a Chinese person to pronouce "usually" - they will probably say "urally" for some reason. I used to teach English in China and this was my number one problem.

Answer 7

Accent problems. Just the way you guys have problems pronouncing Mandarin or Japanese words properly. Go on - I dare you to pronounce "wo ai ni" PERFECTLY in front of a native Chinese and not drive us Chinese into hysterical fits of laughter when you try.

And excuse me, pretend-know-it-alls-who-answered-this-post-without-having-enough-knowledge-of-another-language, Mandarin does have "R" and "L" sounds. We simply pronounce them differently. Japanese does not have the "L" sound.

Answer 8

oh, this is an accent. China is a big country. There are different accents in different places.Some people can't probably speak standard mandarn. Like English has different accent. People in London speak English in London accent ,Amercian speak American English, persons in Canada speak English in Canada accent.
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Answer 9

I think that you're confusing Japanese with Chinese....Chinese people have no problem with the l sound....japanese people don't have that sound in their language...much like americans have a great deal of trouble with the french 'u' sound..they just can't get it correct.

Answer 10

Because they are from a diff rent Nationality, and their official Language is not English, so they sometimes call the English word a little diff rent from how we would