Chris Croughton wrote:
> The common perception that Chinese and Japanese people reverse 'r' and
> 'l' is incorrect, they actually use a sound between the two for both of
> them so that if one is expecting an 'r' then it is perceived as being
> "more like an 'l'" and vice versa. The same is true of a lot of
> European 'v' and 'w' confusion, the actual sound used for both is
> somewhere between the two.
> Chris C
Did you know that after a couple of years, far eastern children's ears no
longer respond differently to the 'L' sound or the 'R' sound in western languages?
Our ability to hear sounds that correspond to our local languages is defined
by the languages and sounds we are actually exposed to during development,
with the filtration for known linguistic phonemes happening in the ear itself.
Apparently, there are more nerves taking signals TO the ears than FROM.
Rich
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