> (hence most Japanese's problems distinguishing between r/l -- two sounds that are almost identical, and do not carry distinct meaning in Japanese, but do in most(?) European languages)
As someone who watched a fair amount of anime with Japanese audio and has some very basic linguistic training, I want to comment on this idea. It's not totally clear what you mean by "two sounds that are almost identical, and do not carry distinct meaning in Japanese", so you get some non-orthogonal untargeted thoughts.
The R and L sounds are in fact closely related. That said, you, as a native speaker of a language distinguishing them, will do so with extreme accuracy.
A possible interpretation of your sentence is that the "sounds are almost identical [...] in Japanese". That's not a particularly coherent idea (and I stress I'm not trying to attribute it to you); a Japanese speaker will hear them as the same sound, but may vary (in terms of what you would hear) from one extreme to the other in what sound they produce when they need that "one".
If you listen to spoken Japanese (it will help to have a transcript of what's being said, since I assume you don't actually know Japanese), you'll notice that sometimes their R/L is more R-like and sometimes it's a definite L. There are all kinds of reasons why this might be the case (most obviously regional accent or phonetic context), but it's also possible that there's just free variation (a la either/either). I have no idea what's the actual reason is. It isn't possible for me, as an English speaker, to process those as the same sound (although prolonged exposure to Japanese might eventually do it; I've become much more comfortable with losing the s/sh distinction as a side effect of exposure to chinese speakers)
The same way that you perceive "a" and "A" to be the same grapheme despite seeing different shapes, Japanese speakers consider [r] and [l] to be the same phoneme /R/ despite hearing different sounds.
The same way that you might write A or a or even α to write the letter we pronounce as "aye", a Japanese speaker might choose to pronounce [r] or [l].
A Japanese speaker won't be able to tell that they're saying [r] in an English word that has an /l/. The same way that an English speaker might SWEAR they say writer and rider differently until you record them and they have no clue which one they said when.
> A Japanese speaker won't be able to tell that they're saying [r] in an English word that has an /l/.
There's an interesting phenomenon here. As previously mentioned, my mind has partially assimilated to losing the s/sh distinction. I had a chinese tutor who merged those two sounds, and it stopped bothering me. The same tutor also merged n/l and r/y. I didn't assimilate to those; hearing n where the word I knew used l confused me every single time.
What's relevant is that she didn't merge n/l in her english (which was not fluent). That suggests to me that she might have been able retrospectively to identify which she had just used for a mandarin word like 能 (neng). I agree that that depends on having been trained to recognize the distinction, although I find it slightly odd that she wasn't trained to make it in Mandarin. But, grand summary, I suspect a Japanese speaker could be trained to recognize the distinction even in Japanese.
More generally, I don't think the phenomenon of not distinguishing two different sounds (your Japanese speaker) is the same as the phenomenon of fantasizing that you're distinguishing two identical sounds (your english speaker).
> The same way that you perceive "a" and "A" to be the same grapheme despite seeing different shapes, Japanese speakers consider [r] and [l] to be the same phoneme /R/ despite hearing different sounds.
I know that "a" and "A" are the same letter, but I'm easily capable of distinguishing them on demand. In fact, I'm likely to get upset when one is used where I think the other should be. I don't think that mirrors the r/l situation in Japanese. Similarly, I don't vary freely between A and a (and, owing to personal aesthetics, never write α unless I have to write cursive); I follow a fairly clear set of rules that determines one or the other. I know that situation does not reflect the r/l situation in Japanese, although I don't know that it doesn't reflect the situation of any given speaker.
Given a hypothetical Japanese speaker who's capable of producing r and l allophones, if you asked them to repeat a sentence including "are" realized as "ale", down to mimicking the accent, how likely do you think they would be to mimic that realization of [l]?
Of course it is possible, but it is quite difficult. It is easier for children, and generally gets harder with age.
But it also holds true that it gets easier to learn new languages, if you do it a lot. I've heard a lot of people say that it gets easier after the fifth language. I'm only up to four (Norwegian, English, Japanese and French - with a basic understanding of other European "dialects" - German, Spanish, Italian -- and of course "Scandinavian dialects" of Swedish and Danish) -- and I can imagine that if I learned one more "truly distinctive" language, like Finnish, or Mandarin -- I'd start to know more of the "possible ways" we use sounds -- and it would therefore be easier to choose "the right subset" for a new language.
In addition to mimicking accents, singing can be a very useful way to train pronunciation.
>It isn't possible for me, as an English speaker, to process those as the same sound (although prolonged exposure to Japanese might eventually do it; I've become much more comfortable with losing the s/sh distinction as a side effect of exposure to chinese speakers
I can confirm that it happens: if I've been listening to Japanese for a few hours I find myself struggling to distinguish the first few r/ls I hear in English. Even more bizarrely, I've noticed my speech drifting, vocalising an intermediate sound when I'm saying an English world with an l or r in. Strange how the mind works.
I've spent a year in a host-family in Fukuoka in high-school as an exchange student, so I do in fact speak rather fluent Japanese. And I took most of an introduction course in phonetics (and about a year of Japanese) at university (the Japanese course was very basic though).
You do indeed describe the thing I was getting at: the phonemes (sounds that carry meaning) are different in eg: English and Japanese -- but the sounds are (often) there -- they just sound the same to a person that isn't "used to" distinguish between them. I seem to recall there are some now (almost extinct) dialects in Japan that used to distinguish between "ji"(ざ) and "ji"(じ).
The reduction in phonemes is common in all languages, in Norwegian the current struggle is against kids that pronounce "kj" and "s(k)j" sounds the same ("kjenne"=to feel, "skjenne"=to shout (at)).
Teaching exchange students that come Norway some basic Norwegian is also interesting: Many Asians struggle with r/l and v/b (complicated by the fact that most Norwegians believe r and l are "completely different" sounds; when they are in fact very close, and are articulated very closely - similarly with "b" and "v"). Most English speakers have a hard time pronouncing a long Norwegian "ø" -- even if it sounds approximately like the "oe" in "does" -- and they can distinguish perfectly between "He does", and "the does (female deer)...".
I didn't mean word-images in the sense that we don't look at the whole word, I meant that we read the word "as one" (not letter by letter, sound by sound).
Clearly I didn't do a very good job of getting either of points across ... :-)
As someone who watched a fair amount of anime with Japanese audio and has some very basic linguistic training, I want to comment on this idea. It's not totally clear what you mean by "two sounds that are almost identical, and do not carry distinct meaning in Japanese", so you get some non-orthogonal untargeted thoughts.
The R and L sounds are in fact closely related. That said, you, as a native speaker of a language distinguishing them, will do so with extreme accuracy.
A possible interpretation of your sentence is that the "sounds are almost identical [...] in Japanese". That's not a particularly coherent idea (and I stress I'm not trying to attribute it to you); a Japanese speaker will hear them as the same sound, but may vary (in terms of what you would hear) from one extreme to the other in what sound they produce when they need that "one".
If you listen to spoken Japanese (it will help to have a transcript of what's being said, since I assume you don't actually know Japanese), you'll notice that sometimes their R/L is more R-like and sometimes it's a definite L. There are all kinds of reasons why this might be the case (most obviously regional accent or phonetic context), but it's also possible that there's just free variation (a la either/either). I have no idea what's the actual reason is. It isn't possible for me, as an English speaker, to process those as the same sound (although prolonged exposure to Japanese might eventually do it; I've become much more comfortable with losing the s/sh distinction as a side effect of exposure to chinese speakers)
Finally, your idea that we read word-pictures, and not words, is quite wrong; the best exposition I'm aware of is at http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/WordRecognition....