[net.nlang] R & L in Chinese

suran@utcsri.UUCP (Henry Chai) (02/09/86)

In article <56@druri.UUCP> clive@druri.UUCP (StewardCN) writes:
>In Korean and Japanese, I believe nearly as true in Chinese,
>there is _no_ differentiation of the sounds we think of as 
>R or L.  

In Chinese, different dialects have different variations. 
In Cantonese, 'R' does NOT exit: there is only 'L',
whereas in Mandarin, they have both.  They like to add the
character 'er' to the end of other words as a sign of affection,
e.g. "tseeng peean-er", meaning 'Peking accent'.  In this case
it is pronounced almost identical to the American "er".

mac@uvacs.UUCP (Alex Colvin) (02/13/86)

> In article <56@druri.UUCP> clive@druri.UUCP (StewardCN) writes:
> >In Korean and Japanese, I believe nearly as true in Chinese,
> >there is _no_ differentiation of the sounds we think of as 
> >R or L.  

> In Cantonese, 'R' does NOT exit: there is only 'L',
> whereas in Mandarin, they have both.  They like to add the
> character 'er' to the end of other words as a sign of affection,
> e.g. "tseeng peean-er", meaning 'Peking accent'.  In this case
> it is pronounced almost identical to the American "er".

Interesting.  This sounds like the use of /-l/ suffix in German as a
diminutive.

There is confusion between /r/ and /l/ even in IE languages.  Rajah vs.
Lajah in different Prakrits.

To top that, the same word is pronounced Dakota, Lakota, or Nakota,
depending on the dialect.