Subject: Re: [FFML][Spam][Question] Help (L vs R)
From: Ed Sharpe
Date: 7/28/1996, 2:56 AM
To: fanfic@fanfic.com

At 02:16 AM 7/28/96 -0400, you wrote:
At 00:09 28/07/96 -0700, you wrote:


<stuff deleted>


However, I do know that it is NOT pronounced "Lanma".  There are NO L's 
in Japanese!  When Japanese folk try to pronounce foriegn word with Ls in 
them, they replace the L's with R's.  This includes English, Chinese and 
other languages ( in contrast, there are a lot of L's in Chinese).  The 
singer of the theme song were trying to sound Chinese for some reason, so 
they pronounced the R's like L's.

It that there is no R's in japanese, they become L's...

That why they all yell

"LANMA!"


        Technicaly there are no "L's" or "R's" in Japanese.  The five 
sounds that Japanese have are usally romanized as RA, RI, RU, RE, and RO.
However the actually sound lies somewere between "R" and "L".  If you
place your tounge at the back of you top front teeth where they meet 
you gums and the pronounce RA, RI, RU, RE, RO without rolling you tounge
you will come close the sound.  To my ear RA, RU, and  RO sound closer
to "L" and RI and RE sound closer to "R".  In my experince different 
speakers will fall closer to one or the other ("L" or "R").  Listen to 
what they are saying donot fall into the trap of trying to force Japanese
to fit exactly with English.  Altho' Japanese sounds does tend to fit
with English sounds better than a lot of other languages.

ed
//
//  "Does the sight of cleavage make you insane?!"  Ukyo
//