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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site utcsri.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcsri!suran
From: suran@utcsri.UUCP (Henry Chai)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: R & L in Chinese
Message-ID: <2078@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Feb-86 15:16:14 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.2078
Posted: Sun Feb  9 15:16:14 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Feb-86 15:20:57 EST
References: <6333@utzoo.UUCP> <26400001@uiucuxe> <56@druri.UUCP>
Reply-To: utflis!chai@utcsri.UUCP (Henry Chai)
Organization: Faculty of Library & Info. Sci., Univ. of Toronto
Lines: 11
Summary: 

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".