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Subject:RE: Don't know what to title this... From:"David Godley" <david -dot- godley -at- thinking -dot- com -dot- au> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 27 Apr 2004 18:35:26 +1000
=Sankara wrote:====
Now R and L being Free Variants is observed in,
in addition to, and in more interesting ways - in
none other than Thailand. Wherein, I am told,
young girls freely discuss erections with
strangers; but then, you realize it is all to do
with takshin sinawatra. Like they are very royal
to the Loyal family! Bottomline is both sounds
exist and they are used at random, methinks.
===
>From my experience, it is not random although it may sound so.
I think it is almost always R for L and that it is most pronounced in people from regional Thailand. My reasoning....
Thai does not have syllables that end with either sound which makes a midword 'R' very difficult. Just as an initial Ng is difficult for native English speakers. A Thai might just as readily say that we randomly swap N (No Nen) and K (Ko Kai) for the Ng (Ngo Ngu) sound when we speak Thai.
The L (Lo Ling) and the R (Ro Rua) in Thai are closer in sound than they are in English. So it is easy for the untrained ear to not hear the more subtle differences in the sounds.
In Thai the substitution of L for R does occur - it is primarily a regional thing that is generally seen as a lazy. That laziness in pronunciation transfers across to their spoken English.
Most Thai learn English from people for whom English is a second language which just compounds the problem.
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