Two questions about R and L in Japanese/Mandarin?

Question

First question: Why does Japanese have an R/L sound, whereas Mandarin has both an R and an L sound?

Second question: Why do Mandarin speakers have difficulties with the R and L sounds in English, when they already have the distinction between the two in their own language?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Though Japanese shares the Chinese language in the form of hiragana, Japanese and Chinese are two different languages, and thus have two different ways of dealing with liquid consonants (l and r).

In my experience, my dad (who is from Beijing) has no problems pronouncing Ls and Rs, though my mom (a native Cantonese speaker) will sometimes slur both consonants together while talking. Depending on the dialect, there can be different effects on their English pronunciation

Answer 2

To first question: in my opinion, Japanese R sound is close to Chinese L sound and Japanese doesn't have L sound.

To second question: why Mandarin speakers have difficulties with the R and L sounds in English is because R/L in Mandarin is different from that in English and everyone learning a foreign language often gets influenced by their mother tongue. But this is not eternal. If they paid enough attention to their pronunciation at the very start, they would get rid of it someday. (I don't have problem pronouncing R/L in English.)

Answer 3

probably the same reason why americans can't do double r's in spanish. It's what your tongue is accustomed to doing in pronouncing words.  

Answer 4

First question: Why should these languages have similar sound systems? The answer is there is no reason why.

Second question. Mandarin has an r and an l, but they are not the English r and l. The r is very different from the English r. It is similar to the English r only when it occurs as the final sound of a syllable. It is not easy to use it in all positions within the syllable in English. Northerners are much more used to this final r sound than southerners, who do not use it at all.

Answer 5

Well, I'm no etymologist,  but I'd guess that a long long time ago when people first went to Japan, their language would have been heavily influenced by dialects from migrant families from ancient China.

I've lived in China for 6 years. Pronunciation problems are purely regional. Mandarin speakers don't universally have trouble with any sounds in particular. It just depends on their region and often depends on their local dialect.

In some places in china, they replace L sounds for N sounds at the beginning of a word (你冷不冷 incorrectly pronounced ad ni neng bu neng). In other places they can only say an H sound before and "ow" vowel noise and not before an "ahn" noise (they can say 好 hao, but can't say 饭 fan, which they pronounce huan instead).

Answer 6

Northern Chinese people, Beijing and thereabouts, have little problem with the distinction yet Southern Chinese make several common mistakes in Mandarin as their local dialects may not include some of these sounds.

When Chinese, especially southerners, learn English they don't properly see the distinction between the 2 as they usually make the same mistake when speaking Mandarin. In my experience it is like how many other European languages do not include the "th" sound that exists in English so have a hard time replicating it properly. For example, French native speakers tend to say "th" as "d-" or "z-".