alexandrec

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	470 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	1 year, 7 months
211 badges		location	Canada		seen	Apr 3 at 12:50

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Nov 6	suggested	suggested edit on What differences should I look out for between male vs female speech?
Nov 6	comment	Why do Japanese speakers have difficulty pronouncing “L”? "I've never really understood why learning systems adopted "R's" when "L's" seem closer in sound" -- I'm guessing here you are refering to romaji using r instead of l. Maybe you are thinking about the English r, but generally, the Japanese r sounds the same as r in most other languages, so it does make sense to use r instead of l in romanization systems.
Nov 6	revised	Why do Japanese speakers have difficulty pronouncing “L”? Edited for legibility
Nov 6	awarded	Critic
Nov 6	revised	Why do Japanese speakers have difficulty pronouncing “L”? added 3 characters in body
Nov 6	comment	Why do Japanese speakers have difficulty pronouncing “L”? l does exist in Japanese, but not as a distinct phoneme (ask a Japanese speaker to say ringo slowly, it should sound like l, especially for women). Furthermore, if you are going to use n as an analogy, it would be to indicate where the tongue is placed, and that place is the same for l, n, d, t, s, z, ts and dz -- all of which are Japanese sounds.
Nov 6	comment	Why do Japanese speakers have difficulty pronouncing “L”? l and r both exist in Japanese, but they are allophones of a single phoneme. And I'm not sure what a cross between English R and L would sound like, but certainly not what Japanese would pronounce in a word like Engrish. I would downvote, but I think your last comparison with x and sh is valid.
Nov 6	comment	Why do Japanese speakers have difficulty pronouncing “L”? Oh come on, the question was clear even though it says "Japanese people". It could have said "native speakers of Japanese", but we still all got the question.
Nov 6	revised	Why do Japanese speakers have difficulty pronouncing “L”? added 458 characters in body
Nov 6	answered	Why do Japanese speakers have difficulty pronouncing “L”?
Oct 21	awarded	Yearling
Oct 20	awarded	Nice Question
Oct 17	comment	Except for pitch, what are the differences in pronunciation between Kansaiben and Tokyoben? Japanese has pitch accent, English has stress. French has neither. All three languages have intonation; it's a different thing entirely. You can say boku with raising intonation or not, depending on your intent, but boku will always remain HL.
Oct 17	comment	Rules for emphasizing by lengthening sounds Since g and ng (as in English -ing) are interchangeable, you can have ng-g, gg and double ng. However, you will never get g-gn.
Oct 17	suggested	suggested edit on Except for pitch, what are the differences in pronunciation between Kansaiben and Tokyoben?
Oct 17	comment	Except for pitch, what are the differences in pronunciation between Kansaiben and Tokyoben? No. Japanese has pitch accent whereby every mora surfaces as either high or low, which differs from intonation, which every language has.
Oct 16	answered	Rules for emphasizing by lengthening sounds
Sep 30	asked	Except for pitch, what are the differences in pronunciation between Kansaiben and Tokyoben?
Aug 27	comment	Why is “Xy” pronounced as “Ki Shi” in Xylitol「キシリトール」? @nkjt Excellent answer, except that if the Japanese borrowed the word from German and followed the IPA you mention, then the result should be closer to the German transcription you offered of クシュ...
Aug 27	comment	Why is “Xy” pronounced as “Ki Shi” in Xylitol「キシリトール」? @phoenixheart6 It may come from Greek etymologically, but it hasn't stopped English from saying it otherwise, so it's irrelevant. Greek is used to form words, but they are not directly borrowed from Greek so the original pronunciation is not retained.