Mouth shape
 

A search shows this has never been discussed before.

According to one Japanese language website I went to, the only difference between an American "L" and an American "R" is a subtle difference in the tongue position.

However, I was saying the word "starlight" out loud to myself, after hearing the word masecred in the OP on X-TV, and noticed that in fact it not just my tongue that moves. For the "R" in "Star", my mouth shape remains in basically a neutral position...indeed, only the tongue moves for this part. However, when imediately starting the "L" in "Light", my mouth immediately flatens and widens...as though baring my teeth at someone. While my lips are doing this, my tongue goes hard against the back of the upper teeth, and my throat goes "rrrrr". With my mouth flattened and widened, and my tongue hard against the back of my teeth, out comes a very hard "L": LLLLight.

Its different again when I say the word "Electricity". Here, the "L" is quite similar, although the widening and flattening of the mouth is not as extreme. However, the "R" in "Electricity" I do differently than the "R" in "Star". Whereas when making the "R" in "Star" my lips did not change shape at all, when making the "R" in "Electricity" my lips compress somwhat at the start of the R, almost as though I am going to make a "W" sound, then returns to a neutral shape when transitioning from the "R" to the "I" in the word. Maybe I'm just Elmar Fudd with a speech impediment :D

And your point is...? :heh:

Its basic information, my dear. You now know something you would not have known had you not read this thread.

Yes, new knowledge is registering intself in my brain as we speak.

Your utterly defeated _Sin_, die in oblivion.

by the way, get your old Avy back, it's just not you without it :heh:

Don't tell me that you don't like Rayne :heh:

Oh yeah, some more information:

The keys asdfghjkl are located next to each other on the keyboard unlike qzbxdvs who are not.

That's one way to put it. The l is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the sides of the tongue, but the r is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the center of the tongue. Technically, though, there is more than one l sound in English. The l in lip and the l in milk are phonetically thought of as slightly different sounds.

I declare this thread as the Useless Random Facts Thread!

Now to demonstrate this, I will give you a fact that you'll never need to know in your life but will anyway!

Banana's are the only fruit that was never the "Fruit of the Month".

Ducks have a flying-falling-death-rocks-from-above sense.

Calvin and Hobbes was the first comc strip in existance to use the word "boogers" in a comic strip.

Everyone hates Jarjar Binks.

Pop 'n Music is a doinky idea for a video game.



See? Completely useless. :D

OKey........ Should I care or somthing.

That doesn't address the fact that there is a different shape to the lips, and not just the shape of the tongue, which was my point in the first place. These guys claim to be expert translaters, and yet they claim that only the tongue changes shape, which is incorrect.

Actualy I know some (former) kids who liked him... strange but true. :eek:

The Japanese "r" is really more like a cross between r, l, and d. The 5 letters it is used in are:

Hiragana: ら、り、る、れ、ろ
Katakana: ラ、リ、ル、レ、ロ
Romanized: ra, ri, ru, re, ro


The sound is made by touching your tongue to the top of your mouth. I don't think mouth shape has any effect on it.



Why do I feel I just wasted 2 minutes of my life posting here? :twitch:

Mouth shape does indeed have an effect on it, when making English rs and ls, as you will see if you read my first post. I do not make these sounds by touching the tongue to the top of my mouth. Try again.

Did you know that in many parts of Asia people pronounce "el" as "air". My dad and his Asian colleagues do this all the time, but I never take the time to corrent them. For example:

help is pronounced hairp
bell is pronounced bair

It's very strange, I don't know where this fits in the logics of phonics.

Let's continue,

Pigs orgasm for about 30 minutes.

Lion can perform up to 200 sexual actions a day.

If all Chinese took a shit at the same time, Taiwan would't be an island anymore.

Nice, those are interesting stats.

Except he wasn't talking about English R's and L's. He was pointing out how the Japanese R/L meta-sound (as near as we can understand it) is pronounced. Your OP and his reply are related only in that they're talking about linguistic phenomena.

Interesting observation ... I've been trying to prove this wrong through a number of experiments and failed. I do believe this is nobel prize material.

You don't really pronounce the "R" in "star", it's just your American accent. Try listening to a Londoner, it's just an elongated "a" sound. In "electricity," you are actually pronouncing the consonant that sounds like "chw" and not a combination of "t" and 'r," unless you are speaking like a Russian or something.