Majuscules and minuscules

[Joel S. Berson]

At 11/19/2009 08:48 AM, Randy Alexander wrote [in
response to personal mail, but I'm taking a
liberty I trust he will not object to]:

>On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 9:37 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> > Thanks, Randy. Â Now I can pass this on to my correspondent.
> >
> >
> >> bei4la1ke4 (dot) ao4ba1ma3
> >
> > No wonder native speakers of Chinese have trouble with L vs. R! Â  :-)
>
>I think that's more of a Japanese trait, since they don't
>differentiate the two, but Chinese people do that sometimes too.  In
>the south, they have trouble differentiating between L and N.  I once
>had a girlfriend from Hong Kong (this was when I was at conservatory)
>who said she was practicing a "play-nude".  (prelude) (!)

Word of the year for "foreplay"?  or eggcorn?

Joel


>Anyway, it's somewhat logical for "ra" to change into "la" in Chinese,
>because the initial "r" sound in Chinese is a fricative, so it's not
>really anything like the English "r" sound.  Also there is no "ra"
>syllable, only ran, rang, and rao.
>
>--
>Randy Alexander
>Jilin City, China
>Blogs:
>Manchu studies: http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
>Chinese characters: http://www.bjshengr.com/yuwen

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