Why do Japanese mix up "L" and "R"?

[yuiyoshida]

[Kittycow]

1. I've heard that stereotype all my life.

How it developed is pretty interesting. A lot of the words at the end I have to say slowly or I just don't say them to avoid embarrassment.(I had to take speech therapy as a child )

This couple is very charming! I may have seen them before, maybe in a reaction video to Childish Gambino's "America", but I'm not sure. I'd like to check them out some more

[rownesheck]

2. I know some rednecks

who can't pronounce the letter "L". "Foder" instead of "folder", "hode" instead of "hold", "code" instead of "cold".

[JuJuYoshida]

3. that was pretty cute, good posy Yui! ;)

[soryang]

4. Koreans sometimes have difficulty with pronouncing L and R as well

The character ㄹ in hangul can have either pronounciation depending where it is positioned in a syllable. If it is first, then it is an R sound.

For example, in the word Goryeo, the medieval Korean kingdom after which Korea derives its modern name, is 고려. The second syllable begins with the consonant ㄹ, therefore it is pronounce with an R sound.

A more common example found in everyday speech is the object of the verb marker 을 eul, or the plural marker for subjects 들, dul. In these words ㄹ is pronounced with the L sound because ㄹ appears at the end of the syllable.

So the difficulty for native speakers of Korean can arise in English with not knowing the practice for choosing the correct pronunciation for L or R. An example would be in pronouncing hello. The first L would be pronounced as L correctly. But the second L might be pronounced with an R sound, yielding hel ro. Of course with experience, the most common English words would become easier to pronounce in the American fashion.

By the way, my Korean pronunciation is awful. Korean television broadcasting tends to put the important quotes or bullet points in hangul on the bottom of the screen for people struggling with the dialects or pronunciation issues.

[Kablooie]

5. This problem crops up often between me and my wife.

Usually I can tell what she means but sometimes the mispronounced sentence still makes perfect sense and can be very confusing. We've had some futile arguments because of this at times.