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

On Wed, 2 Jul 2003 11:41:58 +0100 Ian Spackman
<ianspackman@...> writes:
> I think this is more to do with English than with Japanese.  I've
> heard
> English speakers describing the Japanese r as "exactly halfway
> between r
> and l", and there is something to this to my ear, but this is surely
> because English r is just an approximant.
> I sometimes wonder how speaker of those English dialects which have
> the alveolar flap as allophones of /d/ and /t/ hear it.
> Ian
-

I speak one of those dialects, although sometimes i also have [?] in the
same environment under influence from other people i know.  But when i
was taking Japanese, the /r/ sounded like a mix of [d] [l] and [r], and
in different environments it resembled one or more of them more than
others; i definitely remember certain times it sounded extremely [l]-like
to me.  It wasn't nearly as confusing as the Arabic /G/, though, which
could sound like [G] [w] [3] [R] and a few other sounds i can't remember
at the moment.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "do it under some foliage"
  (the answer to all of life's problems and complications)
     ~ the huck finn of the lower east side