Tip for racists

[benlehman]

Chinese people can distinguish between "l" and "r" sounds just fine, in fact probably better than English-speakers can. It's only Japanese people that have trouble with it.

If you're going to write stupid racist captions on pictures of the US-China summit, get it right. How can I be offended if you're not going to at least put in a minimum amount of effort on this one?

Comments

[nekoewen.livejournal.com]

The Japanese "r" sound is a... I think the proper term is a flap. It occurs in English only in places like the D in the lazy Americans way of saying "today". There are plenty of things about English that trip up Chinese speakers (and vice versa!), but that's not one of them.