Why do Japanese switch 'R' and 'L' ?

Question

They can pronounce both but they pronounce one instead of the other.Just wondered why this happens...

Answer 1

Well, it is my understanding that the "L" does not exist in Japanese, and that's why Japanese pronounce the "L" like "R".
This peculiarity was used during WW II, when Japanese tried to infiltrate the army disguised as Philippines.
The American army began to use passwords filled with "L" but the Japanese pronounced them like "R" and were discovered

Answer 2

Every language has got certain phonemes, these are "sounds" (technically not correct but it's the best way to describe them, apart from "a phoneme is the smallest unit of speech that distinguishes meaning") which are used to build words.

Example:
foot : 3 phonemes: F - OO - T
So an example of a phoneme would be the [t]

Every language distinguishes different phonemes. Eg. In Dutch the phoneme [th] doesn't exist, and thus Dutch speakers of English can't hear or pronounce the difference between a normal [t] and a [th] unless they've had some practice and LEARN to distinguish it.

Same goes for the [r] and [l] problem you're wondering about.
English has a different phoneme for both [r] and [l], but in Japanese this difference does not exist which means they can't distinguish between these two and hear both of them as the phoneme they do know, namely the [l]. Therefore when they say a word like "road" it'll sound totally off for native English speakers.

Hope this helped a bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme
here you can find some more info on phonemes, which might be more accurate than what I typed in here since I don't have access to the IPA symbols to describe sounds/phonemes/pronounciation accurately

Answer 3

They don't. In fact, there is no R or L sound in Japanese but there is a sound which is somewhere between the two. This makes it sound as though they are pronouncing a L where you expect an R and an R where you are expecting an L. In my experience, the effect of R replacing L is much more noticeable than the other way around.

Answer 4

Its the problem with the 'meta-language' or the mother-tongue.

Same reason why the English cannot speak certain sounds in French, Malayalam or Arabic, etc.

It so happens that Japanese (and any other language) has it's own constructs and pronunciations which get carried over when Japanese people talk in English. Most languages have sound constructs and/or limitations depending on their age (a newer language will have more sounds/constructs)

This is an involuntary action.

Only Japanese people who know English well will be able to not-switch letters.

Others will continue to speak in 'Ja-nglish'!

Answer 5

Actually there are both 'R' and 'L' pronunciation in Japanese.
But Japan use R when they write basically.

Check Hiragana and Katakana table. There is so called "Ra" row. ra ri ru re ro.
These sounds are used in various Japanese words. It is sometime pronounced with 'R' sound, and some other time 'L' sound. And it also depends on the region.
Japan government didn't classed this "Ra" row, but decided to use "R" when they have to write Japanese in alphabets.
This is just a rule. Not real sound.

Both 'R' and 'L' pronunciations exist in Japanese. But Japanese don't care the difference. Because Japanese don't use alphabets when they write Japanese words.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana#Table_of_hiragana-r.C5.8Dmaji

Answer 6

It's because the two sounds are considered the same in Japanese. Just like in English, we don't distinguish between the different p or b sounds. There is a p sound that is very airy sounding, one that is almost a pop, and then another one I don't remember. In some languages, you might have 3 words with completely different meanings that sound exactly the same except they have different versions of the p sound. In English, if you said "porcupine" with any 3 of those p sounds, it would still mean porcupine. I hope this makes sense.

Answer 7

The japanese language only has one sound which is a mixture of the two. Even the most fluent japanese speakers of english have difficulty here.

Answer 8

In the Japanese langauge, both aren't found. Instead, they've got a combination of r,l, and d which is refered to in Romanji (Romanzition of Japanese) as R. So, maybe, L and R are the same thing for them.

Answer 9

i know japanese can pronounce 'r' and 'l' .
but we dont notice...
because there are no difference between 'ra' and 'la' in japanese.
sometimese english natives says 'you're wrong. not 'r' , this word is 'l' .'
but we dont know the difference.

do you know about eskimo?
there are lots of word for 'white' in eskimo. because they are living north pole and watching snow every day. so they know the difference. yellowish white, bluish white.... etc.
they need lots of word for white.

japanese 'r' and 'l' are same thing.
we didnt need 'r' and 'l'. so we just have one.

Answer 10

Yeah!!!

That is why, a Japanese, when asked how often they have elections, answered, ''we have elections 2 times a day'.

)))