Harold Hayes Wrote:

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.

How many Japanese people do you know, Harold?

True, Japanese has no "L" per se, but the "R" series is OFTEN pronounced as "L"

Zen has a friend who is *very* Japanese - she works for Animax designs, and
is an extremely talented artist.  Whenever she uses a word in English, she
will transpose L's and R's...

For Example, "red" becomes "led" and "black" becomes "brack" and so on.

It has nothing to do with "trying to sound chinese..." It is just that as
far as Japanese is concerned, there is no functional difference between the
L and R sounds.  Setsumi can't even tell the difference between them when
she hears them.

If you listen closely to original dialogue versions of the Ranma episodes,
you'll often hear Akane pronounce his name "Lanma" - Hell, even in the
dubs, Ranma's mother Nodoka will pronounce Ranko as "Lanko"...

It just seems to be a mild difference in dialect.

Zen-

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