I hear that all the time. in fact, in any given context, teh same speaker (by the way, I'm using film dialoge as my examples - so hardly real life, but this is wehre i noticed it) in any given context, teh same speaker may use "l" or "r" to my ear, depending on teh placement of the word. Yet my husband, fluent in japanese, assures me that they are the same letter or at least the "ri/li", and ro/lo, etc., are the same letter.

I could understand it being characteristic of one dialect or one speaker, but any individual speaker will switch "sounds" in this apparent phoneme. if I were more careful, i might find times where the r/l shift is do to slides, or realtion to other consenants, etc. but that's called "efforts" lol

All:

Of course, Jheem is right. I was sitting, practicing Nihongo vocabulary and obviously overdoing it. I, too, have heard Japanese speakers use an English-style L, but attributed it to hyper-correction. I never heard my obachan make this sound.

The Cantonese shift is news to me. I'll check with my cousin (I'm half Chinese on my mother's side.) who is a native Cantonese speaker if he's heard this - but it would be among Chinese-Americans, with maybe some Hong Kong doi among 'em. Does this happen in Toy san hua, too?

Kurumada in Arcata