Topic: Tag alias: lanamon -> ranamon

The tag alias #82195 lanamon -> ranamon is pending approval.

Reason: Official Bandai sources use both spellings of this name, so for tagging images they should be consolidated.

The Japanese language's difficulty with L sounds strikes again. (Their R sound is actually about halfway between English R and English L.)

clawstripe said:
The Japanese language's difficulty with L sounds strikes again. (Their R sound is actually about halfway between English R and English L.)

Yep, it's a voiced alveolar tap that can be central or lateral [ɾ~ɺ].

According to Wikipedia, this actually requires a massive paragraph and 7 different sources to talk about...

Realization of the liquid phoneme /r/ varies greatly depending on environment and dialect. The prototypical and most common pronunciation is an apical tap, either alveolar [ɾ] or postalveolar [ɾ̠].[38][39][13] Utterance-initially and after /N/, the tap is typically articulated in such a way that the tip of the tongue is at first momentarily in light contact with the alveolar ridge before being released rapidly by airflow.[40][39] This sound is described variably as a tap, a "variant of [ɾ]", "a kind of weak plosive",[40] and "an affricate with short friction, [d̠ɹ̝̆]".[13] The apical alveolar or postalveolar lateral approximant [l] is a common variant in all conditions,[13] particularly utterance-initially[40] and before /i, j/.[38] According to Akamatsu (1997), utterance-initially and intervocalically (that is, except after /N/), the lateral variant is better described as a tap [ɺ] rather than an approximant.[40][41] The retroflex lateral approximant [ɭ] is also found before /i, j/.[38] In Tokyo's Shitamachi dialect, the alveolar trill [r] is a variant marked with vulgarity.[38] Other reported variants include the alveolar approximant [ɹ],[13] the alveolar stop [d], the retroflex flap [ɽ], the lateral fricative [ɮ],[38] and the retroflex stop [ɖ].[42]

Or in other words, "halfway between r and l".