Re: [lojban] Phonology of L vs R (probleme with japanese speakers ?)

[tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>]

On 28 May 2011 13:52, Escape Landsome <escaaape@gmail.com> wrote:
> As you may now, Japanese speakers do not make distinction between the
> [r] and the [l] sounds.  For them, they are quite the same thing,
> indeed, phonologically speaking, they are the same phoneme (in the
> japanese language system).

Phonemically identical, but phonotactically different. In "論理 / ろんり"
/ronri/ ("logic"), the second /ri/ seems generally closer to [li]
regardless of the first one. In fact, the original Chinese sound for
"理" consists of /l/ [l] rather than /r/ [ɻ] (so does "論"). As an
onset, "理" may be either [li] or [ɾi], as in "理由 / りゆう" /riyuu/
("reason").

So, the language may have both [l] and [r] in oral environments. But
the difference has no use in word recognition.

Korean, very similarly, doesn't phonemically distinguish between the
two sounds: "ᄅ" for [ɾ] and [l] (+ even [n]). There is also some
controversy about Chinese /r/, which is somewhere between [ɻ] and [ʐ].


> So, does it happen there are japanese native speakers in
> lojbanistan ?  How is this particular problem handled ?

Although I'm not legally Japanese, I natively speak their language.
I'm also the moderator for the unofficial Japanese-based Lojban
mailing list with 20+ members:
http://groups.google.com/group/lojban-soudan
Some of them have been taking the initiative to hold a bi-week
workshop on Skype, in which I participate as a commentator. I do
notice the fusion of /r/ and /l/ in their pronunciation of Lojban
words. And a beginner is likely already familiar with the issue, since
it's something they commonly encounter in their compulsory English
class between ages 12 to 15. Apparently many of them struggle with it.
Google "l と r 聞き分け" ("telling l and r apart"), and you get hundreds of
thousands of results. As for me: I had some Western backgrounds
(particularly French), so I don't think I've gone through the same
problem to the same extent as native Japanese speakers generally do;
nonetheless, I understand their perspective and can easily sympathize
with them in their effort to deal with the difficulty.

"love" is popularly borrowed into Japanese as "ラブ", which
transliterates as "rabu" and is pronounced as [ɾabɯ] (i.e. 2 consonant
mismatches, 2 vowel mismatches -- spoken English can be a nightmare
for these people). Modern Japanese has no [v] (or it isn't
distinguished from [b]) -- another setback they would encounter in
Lojban. In Spanish, somewhat similarly, /verbal/ is said to be
[berβal], which would be Lojbanized as /berval/, i.e. /v/ for /b/, and
/b/ for /v/ ("verba" might be a good test for a native Spanish
speaker's familiarity with Lojban).


On 2 June 2011 22:29, Zifre <kmicklas@gmail.com> wrote:
> If a Japanese speaker simply couldn't make the distinction, the only words that I can see causing confusion are "lo" and "ro".

Also:

  le / re
  xlura / xrula (Right on, Pierre)
  rarbroda / ralbroda / larbroda / lalbroda

Someone on the jpn-jbo mailing list recently expressed his concern
about mispronouncing "polno" as "porno":
http://groups.google.com/group/lojban-soudan/browse_thread/thread/493b1ca9fc0b5777

Additionally the following may be challenging for them:

  any word with /lr/ or /rl/ -- e.g. surla, solri
  any word with /v/ or /vb/ or /bv/ -- e.g. febvi, rivbi
  any word with /si/ (because /si/ is always pronounced as [ʃi] in Japanese)*
  any word with /zi/ and /zu/ (because /zi/ is natively recognized as
[ʒi] and /zu/ as [d͡zu])
  any word with /ue, ui, uo, uu, ie, ii/ (because these glides aren't
phonemic for them)
  any word with /j/ (because no [ʒ] or [ʐ])
  any word with /x/ (because no [x])
  any word with /y/ (because no phonemic schwa)

  * Incidentally, they natively pronounce the letter "c" in general as
[ʃi:], whose consonant coincides with the one of Lojban "c".


mu'o mi'e tijlan

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