Re: THEORY: language and the brain [Interesting article]

On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 11:34:58AM +0200, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> Not to me. The Japanese r is just an alveolar flap (and the Japanese people
> I've met agree with me) which is no different from the Spanish single 'r'
> between two vowels. Since they don't have a l, they replace it with the
> alveolar flap (the closest thing to an alveolar lateral they have), but
> that doesn't make it any l-like. And I listen daily to enough Japanese
> (between songs and anime) to have quite an informed opinion on that.
Huh.  Based on such descriptions as "halfway between l and r",
I'd just assumed that [l] was an allophonic or dialectical variant
of Japanese /4/; I haven't heard enough Japanese for it to be suspicious
that I hadn't heard [l] firsthand.  But I guess it's just another case
of non-phoneticists getting their "explanation" wrong. :)

Speaking of Japanese phonology - I originally thought, based on the book
I was using, that /u/ was, in fact, pronounced [u].  But then upon
listening to some Japanese speech, I decided it was [y] instead.  Now,
after listening to much more Japanese, I have decided it's actually
[M].   Am I right yet?   Are two or more of the above allophonic
variants?

-Mark

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