Well... as recently as 2 weeks ago the polls were split. I thought that was going to produce a popularvote/electoral college split.
national vs battleground states... but the money was on a narrow Obama victory. It was wider than I was expecting, but narrower than the more popular polls were saying
And... they do partly have a point... the polls were pretty transparently ideological in 2004 and 2000. Although we now know that at least one of the major pollsters was just making up numbers and selling them. >_>
I do wonder if that 'ideological bias' remains if you remove that case of outright fraud.
If you ask a Japanese person to say a word like renraku fast, and then gradually ask them to say it more and more slowly, you will notice that what initially sounded like an r becomes an l as they slow down (usually earlier on for women). So the claim that l and r don't exist is simply wrong -- t...
According to alexandrec's observation of renraku, it does
@snailplane although I couldn't find the comment mentioned by @Flaw that says that, it's pretty rare to see a westerner pronounce 便利 correctly for that reason
@snailplane yeah it does. the [ɾ] following the nasal [N] isn't the usual tap
"The allophone that occurs after a nasal is the same as the one that occurs in utterance-initial position; the tongue tip is already lightly in contact with the alveolar ridge for the nasal, and /r/ is produced by rapidly releasing this contact"
@taylor err... pretty sure she just said she isn't ("I'm not a student")
Anonymous
Actually, I think some of them are more transparent in Japanese. Like, 歯茎 is easier for me to remember than alveolar, because alveolar is very nearly opaque to me
Anonymous
8:35 PM
I don't use the word alveoli often enough to remember what it means.
Anonymous
but at least with 歯茎 the kanji give me a reminder :-)
「らりるれろ」pronunciations are difficult for Japanese learners? At first, when I first started learning English at junior high, my teacher said "English R is difficult.", but later on I thought that "L" was more difficult for Japanese speakers.
@Chocolate Hmm... I have a Japanese friend who has lived in the US for the last 15 years. He can pronounce L and R correctly, but says he can't hear the difference.
