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.