Re: Mutable R's

En réponse à Garth Wallace <gwalla@...>:

>
> My teacher also insisted that it wasn't the same as a Spanish R.
Which R? Spanish has two rhotics /r/ and /4/, both phonemic. If he meant the
initial R (which is always /r/, i.e. [r]), then he's right.

 And a
> native speaker I know has told me that my pronunciation is very good
> (in
> general; he wasn't singling out how I pronounce R).
Since many native Japanese speakers actually can't hear the difference between
[l] and [4], it's hardly surprising.

 Also, some time
> ago
> I read about the IPA that it has "its own character for the Japanese
> R"...can't remember where though, it's been a long time.
>
It's one of those language myths like the one that says that Inuit has 100
words for "snow" or that the Czech r-caret is the most difficult sound of the
world (myth carried on by the Guiness book of records even today). Mind you, I
could pronounce a Czech r-caret even before I learned to distinguish [i] and
[I]! :)))

> But I'm not a native speaker either, so I may be totally off base
> about
> this.
>
The Japanese r seems to be one of the most ill-described consonant in the
world. It *is* simply /4/, and doesn't have much allophony. It is *not*
impossible that one allophone can be [l\] (especially when it's palatalised),
but it's not common enough to treat it like the base phoneme.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

It takes a straight mind to create a twisted conlang.

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