The R and L in English and Spanish Pronunciations

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(1) 阿根廷总统访华 调侃中国人外语发音. BBC Chinese, Feb 4, 2015
www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/worl ... e_president_twitter
(“克里斯蒂娜在推特上开玩笑地说，中国人发不出来 ‘r’ 的发音，导致 ‘r’ 和 ‘l’ 的发音听起来一样。 * * * 克里斯蒂娜的推特说，’有1000多人参加了这次活动，他们都是Campola的吗？’ ‘Campola’ 是克里斯蒂娜所属政党的青年分支，正确的西班牙语拼写是 ’Campora。’ 克里斯蒂娜在推特里还提到了 ‘lice’ 和 ’petloleum，’ 但她指的其实是 ‘rice’ 和 ‘petroleum’”)

My comment: Cristina Kirchner's twitter (in Spanish). Feb 4, 2015 (4:29 AM)
twitter.com/CFKArgentina/status/562951075230400513
("Más de 1.000 asistentes al evento… ¿Serán todos de ‘La Cámpola’ y vinieron sólo por el aloz y el petlóleo? …")
(i) VOA translation: "More than 1,000 participants at the event ... Are they all from the Campola and in it only for the lice and petloleum?"  
Telegram (UK) translation: “Did they only come for lice and petloleum?” (Does not translate the first part.)
(ii) La Cámpora
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cámpora
(an Argentine political youth organization; named after former peronist president Héctor José Cámpora; in 2003 created by Máximo Kirchner, son of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández [de Kirchner])
(iii) Spanish English dictionary
* arroz (noun feminine; from Arabic): “rice”
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arroz
* petróleo (noun masculine; from Medieval Latin petroleum, from Latin petra + oleum):
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/petr%C3%B3leo

choi

(2) Pronouncing r and l in ENGLISH.
(a) More than two years after I came to US, a couple (both Chinese Americans; husband was an assistant professor) taught me in an elevator how to pronounce “r” in English--lip pursed; example: “read.”  I was very grateful. They also taught me about consonant “l”--how to position the tongue.
(b) Teacher Mar, English Pronunciation: Consonant Letters ‘R’ and ‘L.’ English Channel, undated
tx.english-ch.com/teacher/mar/home/english-pronunciation-consonant-letters-r-and-l/

(c) Pronunciation--How to Pronounce L and R (video). English Teacher Melanie, undated
www.englishteachermelanie.com/pr ... unce-l-and-r-video/

Quote:

“Melanie is a TESL-certified English teacher. She lives near Toronto, Canada.

“In this video, I explain how to pronounce the /l/ and /r/ consonant sounds at the beginning of a word or syllable!

“This is the letter r. This is the symbol for the English consonant sound, however most dictionaries and English pronunciation books use this [ɹ] symbol instead.

“[Q & A:] March 30, 2013 * * * In American English, there are two different ‘r’ sounds:
– the consonant sound at the beginning of a word or syllable /r/ (or /ɹ/ to be more precise)
– the vowel sound after a vowel at the end of a word or syllable /ɝ/ in a stressed syllable (nurse, circle) and /ɚ/ in an unstressed syllable (color, grammar)

This is one of the main differences between British & American pronunciation. The British do not pronounce the R after a vowel.”

My comment: I am told that the tongue position of consonant r in the end of a word (eg: deer) is the same as that at the beginning (read). But obviously when th “r” is not at the beginning of a word, the lip can not be pursed.


(d) William Z Shetter, Dahling . . .  PBS, 2000 (under the heading "American Varieties").
www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/southern/dahling/

Quote:

“Looked at geographically, American speakers who most commonly drop the r [when it is not at the beginning of a word] are those from Eastern New England and parts of the South

“British speakers today whose speech is closest to standard British English (called 'Received Pronunciation') do not pronounce r after vowel. Postvocalic r was still regularly pronounced in English speech back in Elizabethan times, and it was around that time (l6th century) that the 'r-less' pronunciation started spreading across much of England. It did not spread as far as Ireland and Scotland, which is why we hear the 'r' pronunciation from the Irish and the Scots today. Many of the original immigrants to the colonies were from Scotland and Ireland, although at the time of settlement most English speakers were still pronouncing r after vowel too.

Note:
(a) So Fah, Dahling it's a Boah! / "It's foah the gahden"/ "fah from heah"

The quotations try to mimic the r-dropping, where they should have been:
So Far, Darling it's a Bore! / "It's from the garden"/ "far from here"
(b) Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003; American; born and raised in and around Hartford, Connecticut until she went to college)
(c) Received Pronunciation
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation
(“RP is defined in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as ‘the standard accent of English as spoken in the south of England [qv]’”--a large swath including London)

The “accent” here is relative to the world. The “standard accent of English” here means the standard English as we know it.
(d) postvocalic (adj; origin: International Scientific Vocabulary; First Known Use: 1892): "immediately following a vowel”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/postvocalic
(e) In other words, the “postvocalic r” is the opposite of rhotic r. See rhotic and non-rhotic accents
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents

* rhotic (adj; back-formation from rhotacism [qv], coined by John C Wells 1968)
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rhotic

choi

(3) For consonant r, there are some differences between the English and Spanish pronunciation, but we can ignore them, for the purpose of this discussion.

(a) Spanish Pronunciation.
www.studyspanish.com/pronunciation/
(“7. Consonant: r” and “32. Consonant: l”)

(b) Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature; A comprehensive and authoritative guide to the world of literature--authors, works, terms, and topics--from all eras and all parts of the world. Merriam-Webster, Inc, 1995. at page xi
books.google.com/books?id=eKNK1YwHcQ4C&pg=PR11&lpg=PR11&dq=english++"consonant+r"++tongue+end&source=bl&ots=J1cyhaIkvJ&sig=ni912AeuJ0gDJzVuY4Qyfh_Kjz8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LNDSVPDIIMGnNoG5gtgC&ved=0CDwQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=english&f=false

Quote:

“\r\  as in rut, tar, error, cart. What is transcribed here as \r\ in reality represents several distinct sounds. As an English consonant \r\ is pronounced with the tongue up slightly behind the teethridge IPA [ɹ]. As a semivowel in words like cart and fore \r\ appears as a retroflexion of the tongue tip in some dialects and as a transitional vowel like \ə\ in the so-called 'R-dropping' dialects of American and British English.

“In other languages \r\ represents a stronger consonant, such as trill or tap of the tongue tip against the teethridge (IPA [r, ɾ) or a trill of the back of the tongue against the soft palate (IPA [R]). * * * The sounds of Danish, German, Portuguese, and Spanish also vary according to phonetic context, but all may be anglicized with the of English")

Note:
(i) “In other languages \r\ represents a stronger consonant, such as trill or tap of the tongue tip against the teethridge (IPA [r [representing ‘trill’], ɾ [representing ‘tap’] ).”  Note the two insertions within brackets.
(ii) International Phonetic Alphabet
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet
(section 5.1 table: in the left column find "Flap or tap" as well as "Trill")


(c) Spanish Dialect. In Lewis Herman and Marquerite Shalett Herman, Foreign Dialects: A Manual for Actors, Directors, and Writers. Theatre Arts Books, 1958, at page 180
books.google.com/books?id=m4B9AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA180&lpg=PA180&dq="consonant+r"+spanish+tongue&source=bl&ots=e8WAXjtzo9&sig=wwfG7RLmMZ0cB0hie-w_MfgWpTY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ZdbSVJHlHIKigwTP_4DgDw&ved=0CFUQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q="consonant r" spanish tongue&f=false

Quote:

“[sketch legend:] When the black area indicates the position of the tongue as it begins trilling the Spanish 'r.' The dotted line shows the tongue curling upward to touch the forward part of the roof of the mouth. An extended series of this rapid interchange of positions causrs the trilled Spanish 'r.'

“R -- As in the other Romance languages, the consonant 'r' is always rolled vigorously. It should never be dropped. When it follows another consonant, it is rolled only slightly, as in ‘brrEEn' ‘ (bring). When it is followed by a consonant, it is also trilled slightly, as in 'pAHrrlEE' (parley). But when it comes between two voiced vowels, as in 'narrow' and 'around,' it is rolled very heavily, as in ‘nAHrrrrAW' (narrow) and ‘AHrrrrAH-OOn ' (around).

My comment: This section taught an actor/actress, who is a native speaker of English, how a Spaniard might speak English.