Why won't the Japanese pronounce "R"?

Question

They have Rs in their language, but sometimes they don't pronounce it, and substitute it with Ls. I notice this usually happens when the R is in the middle of a sentence. But there are exceptions; the R "Yukeru" is still pronounced, but the R in "Hayatochiri" is substituted with L. Is it personal preference? Why?

And what about the Chinese? They have *both* R and L. "Ren" and "Loong", for example. Why do they pronounce L when it's R (usually in other languages. English. And Malay, I can testify to that ^_^). Any Chinese language experts out there?

Answer 1

There is the R sound.

There are Hiragana and Katagana characters for Ra Re Ri Ro and Ru. However, there isn't an L sound so that is why they use R for L. There isn't an L sound in Japanese. There aren't any characters in their language with that sound.

Answer 2

I am an applied linguistics professor in Japan and was once perplexed by the same question many years ago when I first came here.

It is for a couple of reasons. When the Japanese syllabary is put into Roman leters (our A,B,Cs), they use only the letter R. It is misleading because the sound they make is neither an R or an L sound. It is someplace in between the two. Adjoining sounds often alter the sound in some ways making it seem more R than L at times and vice versa.

The best way to think of it is to think of it as a separate sound all together.

Good luck! Ganbate!

Answer 3

It's the same reason english people don't/can't pronounce certain european words that have that noise that sounds like someone clearing their throat and french people (among others) have difficulting saying words with "th" in them and sub it with "zz" (mother becomes "muzzer")

With Japanese they don't have disinguishable L or R sounds and in place have a sound similar to a russian or spanish R sound, between L, R and D. It's only because it is romanised as R that it is written R but it may as well be written L aswell because it's generally the same sound.

Someone said Chinese people can't pronounce L/R properly, this isn't the case as there are plenty of mandarin/cantonese words with Ls and Rs in them, it's most likely just the accent throwing you off.

Answer 4

It is the same as with the English "l" sound, that is quite different whether you say "million" or "full", this is called an allophone, in other languages there are words that are distinguished by this difference in sound, e.g. Russian, and native English speakers tend to have all kinds of difficulty with that.
For the Japanese the sounds that we tend to hear as "r" and "l" respectively are allophones, and do not change the meaning of the Japanese word, which gives them problems with any language where it does.

Answer 5

The R in Chinese is somewhat different from the R in English. We pronounce it with only the tip of our tongues curled up a little, whereas in English it is pronounced with more part of your tongues curled up. I think this problem usually occurs to the older Chinese English learners, probably because when they were students, there were not as many resources of learning English pronunciation, and their English teachers probably taught them that way.

Answer 6

Basically Kah-why (Kah-wah-ee). It kind of sounds like Hawaii with a K, except with out the 'Hoh' in the front, it is pronounced Kah-why.

Answer 7

the Japanese r is somewhere between our r and our l so we often hear what we think is the other. It took me forever to master this the difference between su and tsu is also very difficult.

Answer 8

this is interesting, thanks.

i do think ur question should be not "why won't they" but "why is it difficult for them to"

it's not like they are purposely refusing to.

Answer 9

i hear ya. when i call my local chinese restaurant and order fried rice, i think i'm getting flied lice, honestly, no joke, that's how they read it back.
go figure.

Answer 10

LMAO.

Bery, bery solly, espers chypher san.

Srowry, srowry catchee monkey, ne?