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From: rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Language Learning (anecdotes)
Message-ID: <2877@bcsaic.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Nov-87 11:28:55 EST
Article-I.D.: bcsaic.2877
Posted: Tue Nov 24 11:28:55 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Nov-87 13:43:23 EST
References: <1966@uwmacc.UUCP> <12400009@iuvax> <1117@uhccux.UUCP> <1498@cup.portal.com> <1767@culdev1.UUCP>
Reply-To: rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP (Rick Wojcik)
Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle
Lines: 30
Xref: utgpu comp.ai:1097 sci.lang:1627
Summary: Japanese and others can learn to discriminate [r/l]

In article <1767@culdev1.UUCP> yg@culdev1.UUCP (Yogesh Gupta) writes:
>> be a matter of motivation and other factors (for one thing, Asians can't
>> distinguish between the "l" and "r" sounds, as someone in this newsgroup
>> mentioned.)
>
>I am surprised by the above statement.  I did not see the original (ol
>shourd I be saying oliginar?!).  I know that some Asians have trouble
>distinguishing between the "l" and the "r" sounds but I am certain that
>it is not true for all Asians.
>

I think that the discussion on r/l has been slightly misleading.  
It has been said that adult speakers of Japanese cannot learn to
discriminate r/l.  The fact is that many adults learn to discriminate
these sounds with time.  It also seems to be the case that
discrimination in some phonetic environments is learned earlier than in
others.  One easy way to test this is to recite minimal pairs to
language learners and have them mark spelled words.  With a
sufficiently large number of subjects, you get interesting patterns of
r/l discrimination.

The r/l distinction is difficult for speakers of many languages,
since it is a relatively rare phonemic opposition to have.  Hindi, and
many other (most?) languages on the Indian subcontinent do have the
opposition.

-- 

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Rick Wojcik   rwojcik@boeing.com