Asian challenges hearing and pronouncing R and L

[Wailing.li]

Hi there,

I am not a teacher but a part-time University student. I moved to North America at the age of 5, educated in North America. First language Cantonese and Hakka followed by English, French and now studying Spanish. In my Spanish class my Teacher Assistant highlighted "Asians cannot hear or pronounce R and L" after I had asked another student to repeat what they said. I am extremely offended by this comment as I can hear and pronounce Rs and Ls perfectly well. I just didn't hear that student over every other student speaking. I would like to ask the question to anyone registered to this forum if this blanket statement is based on ALL Asians (including Pakistani, Armenians etc.) regardless of their educational background or simply recent immigrants. It is extremely discriminating to any asian born, raised and educated in North America to be grouped in this category. By making blanket statements like this, it is not only discouraging but almost promotes a learning disability particularly when disclosed in a classroom environment infront of peers. My post here is to gather and learn more about this topic. I have found articles on this however most documents refer to Japanese and East Asians with no mention of North American born or raised Asians.

[fluffyhamster]

Yup, that sounds like a very stupid thing to say, especially to a person like you (or rather, say about you for the "benefit" it seems of the whole class). I'd be a bit p-ed off too, and I'm not even Asian (I have however studied Mandarin Chinese and Japanese, and the former people certainly do not have any problems in hearing and then producing /l/ as opposed to /r/ in either Chinese or English. I am convinced that the supposed difficulty that Japanese students have stems from inflicting silly decontextualized "minimal pair" practice on them along the lines of 'Okay, lice. Lice. What did I say, l(ice) or r(ice)? etc'. The problem would be alleviated by adding context e.g. Hmm what tasty rice vs You have lice, wow so many in fact that you are crawling alive; and just because those students perhaps cannot produce the difference easily at first does not necessarily mean that they are continuing to have problems hearing the sounds given sufficient context. I know that I sometimes guess wrong given such minimal pairs myself, even when it's a fellow native speaker who's producing them!).

But please try not to hold too much against this Teacher Assistant if you missed your chance to pour ridicule if not scorn on his or her "expert opinion" the moment it had been uttered: everyone puts their foot in their mouth from time to time, and I'd like to assume that there was no forethought or malice behind it. The TA was probably just trying to sound "knowledgeable" and "informative" (like teachers sometimes want to) and simply capitalized on something inappropriately in order to spin a half-truth (OK, actually almost a complete untruth!). Don't let it get to you too much.

[Wailing.li]

I had submit a formal complaint against her to the university re...discrimination/racism and they came back supporting her ability to distinguish linguistic challenges vs. discrimination however they admit there was offense to the remark and delivery. I suppose what disturbs me most is that I am the Only Asian in my Tutorial and the 2nd time she reiterated this statement was when another student asked how do you pronounce "v" vs. "b" in Spanish. If you're constantly highlighting one ethnic group and not raising other challenges from other ethnic then it's discrimination.

I'm considering going to the press since there's been quite a bit of cultural topics raised lately and it would be interesting to see if "Asians" in general will feel offended if they were told this. The story itself has circulated around campus and Asians are quite p-ed off. I guess as a linguistic specialists with supporting document of this challenge amongst Asians she/he is clearly not very intellectual of how many people fall in the Asian category. Although I am also quite annoyed when searching through the net and reading all the reports...quite a few use the blanket statement "Asian" while some reference specifically Japanese and Thai. Any suggestions on how I can get all linguistic specialists to recognize and correct the findings to claim only people learning the language now and not people born and/or raised in North America.

Honestly, most people can't even speak proper English and there's a report on Asians!

[fluffyhamster]

This TA should get it through his/her head that you were brought up in the US from an early age and did not step off the banana junk from "Japan" (or Thailand etc etc) yesterday. And he/she should also stick to just the item(s) in question (i.e. the problem another student presumably had with making "v" versus "b" in SPANISH) rather than bringing in all manner of irrelevant, hazy and indeed offensive items. But you're perhaps setting yourself quite a task regarding the usage (and changing it) of the blanket term 'Asian', if only because those references which are actually worth reading further doubtless get down to specifics (specific languages and thus learners of English) at some point beyond their general preamble, and whatever facts you do dig up could just be spun by the uni as, 'Yes, being about an Asian language' (e.g. 'Japanese, Thais etc have problems with l and r, just like your teacher said'). Surely the fact that you were raised in the US and are ethnically Chinese should be sufficient reason to reprimand (publically) this teacher for "getting personal" (i.e. you don't have to have grand reasons and designs for objecting to the personal "attention"). But if you do want to pursue things further, then something like Learner English (from Cambridge University Press) would provide an easy start.
http://www.google.co.uk/books?q=Learner+English+Swan

[Stephen Jones]

Dear Wailing.li

You've been an idiot. Your teacher makes an over-generalization and you send in a formal complaint about racism! Get real. You've just wasted everybody's time including your own.

Here are a couple of basic facts. Firstly a three month year old baby can distinguish between two sounds, irrespective of whether they are separate phonemes in the mother's language. At six months they can't. This means that pretty well the first stage in language acquisition, before the utterance of any speech, is the acquiring of the relevant phonemic structure.

Now this has the secondary effect that where a language does not distinguish between phonemes that another language distinguishes, then the speakers of that language cannot hear the distinction; that is that initially 'rice' and 'lice' do sound identical to speakers of Japanese. There are thousands of examples but some of the most common are 'b' and 'v' for Spanish speakers, 'b' and 'p' for Arabic speakers, 'r' and 'rr' for non-Scottish English speakers, and 'v' and 'w' for Sinhala speakers.

Now this process of failing to distinguish between two phonemes is reversible. If you learn a second language as a native speaker, then this happens automatically; if you learn it as a non-native speaker then conscious effort is required, which is why so many language course books have work on minimal pairs.

There is a cut-off date to being able to learn a language as a native speaker. That is generally reckoned to be just before puberty. So if you came to the States at the age of five and learned English by mixing with English speakers, or speakers of another language who used English as a lingua franca, then you are a native English speaker, which explains why you not only do not have the difficulty but were not even aware of it.

Incidentally, in the US, Asian is not normally used as a term to refer to South Asians, whilst in the UK, it normally refers to South Asians and not others. In neither country is it normal to refer to West Asians as Asians. Turks are often considered as Asians because of the influence of the Ottoman Empire and decades of Orientalism, but Armenians would probably slide into some black hole.

[fluffyhamster]

Dear Wailing.li

You've been an idiot. Your teacher makes an over-generalization and you send in a formal complaint about racism! Get real. You've just wasted everybody's time including your own.

Here are a couple of basic facts. Firstly a three month year old baby can distinguish between two sounds, irrespective of whether they are separate phonemes in the mother's language. At six months they can't. This means that pretty well the first stage in language acquisition, before the utterance of any speech, is the acquiring of the relevant phonemic structure.

Now this has the secondary effect that where a language does not distinguish between phonemes that another language distinguishes, then the speakers of that language cannot hear the distinction; that is that initially 'rice' and 'lice' do sound identical to speakers of Japanese. There are thousands of examples but some of the most common are 'b' and 'v' for Spanish speakers, 'b' and 'p' for Arabic speakers, 'r' and 'rr' for non-Scottish English speakers, and 'v' and 'w' for Sinhala speakers.

Now this process of failing to distinguish between two phonemes is reversible. If you learn a second language as a native speaker, then this happens automatically; if you learn it as a non-native speaker then conscious effort is required, which is why so many language course books have work on minimal pairs.

There is a cut-off date to being able to learn a language as a native speaker. That is generally reckoned to be just before puberty. So if you came to the States at the age of five and learned English by mixing with English speakers, or speakers of another language who used English as a lingua franca, then you are a native English speaker, which explains why you not only do not have the difficulty but were not even aware of it.

Incidentally, in the US, Asian is not normally used as a term to refer to South Asians, whilst in the UK, it normally refers to South Asians and not others. In neither country is it normal to refer to West Asians as Asians. Turks are often considered as Asians because of the influence of the Ottoman Empire and decades of Orientalism, but Armenians would probably slide into some black hole.

Stephen, you are a knowledgeable and thus respected member of this forum, and I myself felt that the OP was perhaps overreacting a little, but (to begin with a sentence stem that you're fond of using), really I don't see why a "Chinese" (Chinese-looking) person raised in America and who has no problems in distinguishing l and r shouldn't be just a little upset that a teacher has singled them out not only once but twice as implicitly if not explicitly having deficiencies that they clearly could not and do not have. But probably the teacher was presuming a greater level of tolerance for being patronized than most mere mortals possess, which makes that teacher a bit like you (actually, you strike me as being worse, because you really seem to quite often believe that you have a right to be contrary from the start; that is of course your prerogative, or rather it would be if the points that you have made in this particular instance actually added up to a coherent argument).

Still, I suppose we should thank you for the geopolitical lesson at least, even though Asia is a large place and the teacher apparently really did just say 'Asians'.
http://www.answers.com/topic/asia?cat=travel

[fluffyhamster]

I could've perhaps been a little less confrontational myself there and simply said that I didn't quite understand the point you were trying to make, Stephen (I wonder if that would've then been spun as a fault on my part!), but instead I'd like to turn the sort of situation that the OP described on its head somewhat and tell you guys a little story of my own.

I knew a guy from Hong Kong who, if he'd not had schooling or done his first degree in the UK, had certainly completed his postgrad studies at an English university and then got an engineering job here, so he'd been living and working in the UK for almost a decade before I got to know him (he went to the same karate club that I did).

Anyway, I happened to meet him sometime after graduating myself and completing the CTEFLA, and as we were chatting away I suddenly exclaimed, 'Wow, you really have excellent English!' (probably my new "career" move was surfacing in my subconscious mind as a potential conversation topic), to which he simply responded 'What?!' I immediately realized that I had offended him and obviously had to then effect quite the "repair".

Do you think that he was an idiot for calling me out like that, or should I have given him a lecture about him not seeming to be aware of the difficulties that English people potentially have in understanding Chinese (the language, let alone Chinese speakers of English!!!). Or should that be the difficulties that Chinese people have in understanding anything. Or the Japanese in understanding Swahili. Or something. Damn him for not being a perfect mindreader.

Please don't tell me that you don't understand my point, because I'm not sure that I myself do (or even have one), and I probably won't take too kindly to any request that I explain myself any more unclearly.

[revel]

Hey all.

The OP does not indicate if the speaker he/she had difficulty understanding was speaking English or Spanish. I have to agree that the TA was a bit out of line generalizing in that manner, though generalities of the sort are often based on reality. I myself would not consider Pakistani or Armenian people to be linguistically "Asian", which supports SJones' comments, we Americans are terribly ignorant about geography in general (generalizing there) and Asian languages tend to be Chinese, Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese etc.

I also agree and second Mr Jones' comments about the adquisition of minimal pairs in any given language. From years of working with Japanese students, I came to realize that they were hearing and pronouncing the same sound for both the r and the l (one even told me that his teacher in Japan had told them that the two "letters" were pronounced the same!). I go on about this question on the Pronunciation board somewhere, I might look for the link and include it later (and I might not!) I firmly believe through my experience that students who are unable to pronounce certain sounds clearly for physical, articulatory reasons are the same students who can not identify those sounds when listening. We can only re-cognize a sound if we already know or produce it, either in our native language or in the language we are learning to speak.

The OP does not give enough detail about the circumstances surrounding his/her formal complaint, and I personally would not assume that he/she were an idiot for standing up for what he/she considers to be her/his rights (we are talking about America here, where people do tend to get huffed up easily and do often "stand up for their rights"). So, I do not support Mr Jones' introduction to his otherwise clear explanation of the minimal pair problem in language learning. (Though I would also like to know more about the 3 month old baby identifying different sounds and how we know that they identify them, any references for that one?)

In three years time none of it will matter to anyone, either the TA will have matured or the OP will have forgotten, or we'll all be talking about something different here at Dave's.

peace,
revel.

[revel]

Hey all.

Here's that link:

http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=791

Don't stop where I wrote my comments, roll on down to the comment made by CEJ where it is noted that the phonetic transcription into Japanese is nearly or is the same for both letters....visual interference.

In the end, though, the visual interference was on the part of the TA who assumed that the Asian looking student in class must have this problem. It's not genetic, you don't get it from your parents like your facial structure or hair colour, it is learned or not learned.

peace,
revel.

[fluffyhamster]

In the end, though, the visual interference was on the part of the TA who assumed that the Asian looking student in class must have this problem. It's not genetic, you don't get it from your parents like your facial structure or hair colour, it is learned or not learned.

Well put.

There is a cut-off date to being able to learn a language as a native speaker. That is generally reckoned to be just before puberty. So if you came to the States at the age of five and learned English by mixing with English speakers, or speakers of another language who used English as a lingua franca, then you are a native English speaker, which explains why you not only do not have the difficulty but were not even aware of it.

Let's get this straight. The TA apparently did NOT say, '(You as) native speakerS are likely unaware of the problems that e.g. Japanese learners of English might have with the phonemes l and r (and you might not even have known what a phoneme was let alone the fact that l and r are ones in English at least)'. That would've been pretty presumptuous and patronizing (re. their explicit, declarative knowledge of linguistics, or supposed lack of it and/or ability to grasp concepts quickly and painlessly) for the whole class (but like I said, that hasn't stopped you from inflicting such an argument on the entire forum). And the TA certainly did not from the sound of it say or add anything like '...but just to be clear, you ALL certainly do NOT have the problems that e.g. Japanese learners do' (patronizing too, but it avoids any potential misunderstanding). But all this linguisticy stuff is IRRELEVANT anyway, given the original context:

In my Spanish class my Teacher Assistant highlighted "Asians cannot hear or pronounce R and L" after I had asked another student to repeat what they said. I am extremely offended by this comment as I can hear and pronounce Rs and Ls perfectly well. I just didn't hear that student over every other student speaking.

Nobody was asking about minimal pairs in Spanish on that first occassion, let alone Asian languages ("specifically", "Japanese" "learners" of "English") - irrelevant, irrelevant, irrelevant. You are as misguided as that TA, SJ.

BTW revel, if the TA were indeed Spanish rather than English, she should learn either to express herself better or when to keep her mouth shut.

[fluffyhamster]

Typical Stephen Jones tactic: post something offensive and indefensible, then almost seem to refuse to come back when somebody has the temerity to take him to task. At least metal would get straight back (usually with further insults). Or when SJ does eventually get back he'll act like everyone apart from him is mad for "wasting" any time at all on this thread, how insignificant it all is etc (didn't stop him posting at some length himself though).

[woodcutter]

I don't think anyone ought to encourage students to run to the bosses shouting "racism" unless the circumstances are very serious. These circumstances are not serious, and I think that the OP ought to be told by all of us, that although we agree that the teacher is being very silly, the complaint is very unfair, and ought to be retracted.

[Stephen Jones]

Typical Stephen Jones tactic: post something offensive and indefensible, then almost seem to refuse to come back when somebody has the temerity to take him to task. At least metal would get straight back (usually with further insults). Or when SJ does eventually get back he'll act like everyone apart from him is mad for "wasting" any time at all on this thread, how insignificant it all is etc (didn't stop him posting at some length himself though). Rolling Eyes

I wasn't aware that you had taken me to task since, as I informed you a couple of years back, I have long given up reading any of your posts.

What the student did was idiotic, and wasted everybody's time. Even if his teacher had expressed himself with little finesse he was not making racist comments and to make an official complaint instead of mentioning it to the teacher, or better still simply forgetting about it, has just wasted everybody's time, and shown up the OP as having a large chip on his shoulder and an oversized sense of entitlement.

(Though I would also like to know more about the 3 month old baby identifying different sounds and how we know that they identify them, any references for that one?)

I came across the research in a copy of Scientific American in the mid 1980s. I can't give a link because it was before the internet and I read it in the Spanish version anyway. I presume a search of the web site, or Google Scholar should bring up the actual research paper, or the original Sci Am article.

[fluffyhamster]

Well, if the TA in question could just refrain from making stupid comments, then the OP might just drop the allegations, and I don't think anyone (i.e. not even me) has been suggesting that things SHOULD be taken further and/or to extremes (e.g. I advised being understanding and forgiving in my very first post). But I don't think that a lecture on minimal pairs from Stephen Jones was helping matters.

[woodcutter]

In defence of the teacher, by the way, any generalizing term that you select will have problems. Even if you say that "East Asians have a problem distinguishing R and L", as a British person might, you never know, there might be somebody from some Chinese minority ready to leap up and give you a hard time.

I started a thread about that a long time ago, but I don't often see the point in dragging up old threads really, nobody adds to them, and it usually just kills the new conversation.