A thing to consider not doing around me

[azurelunatic]

There is a thing that sometimes people do, to be funny or for emphasis or whatever. It is the thing where they substitute the letter L for R in words, such as "VICTOLY" for "VICTORY".

There are many possible places and reasons to have picked up doing this, including the ever-popular "somebody I know was doing it and it seemed like fun".

The roots of this substitution is making fun of people with no distinction between R/L sounds, which is common when people whose first language is Chinese learn to speak English.

Which is why I cringe every time I encounter it, and would prefer that people not do this around me.

Comments

[krait]

I believe that it originated with some specific instance or instances in a videogame translation. (VICTOLY might even be one of the originals; it's been around forever.)

Which I guess is why it doesn't raise my hackles quite as much (to me it reads as "let's mock a specific product or product genre" rather than "let's mock an entire group of people"), but yep, it sure does originate from the difficulties certain languages' native speakers have with the L/R distinction in English, so I can see why it grates. It's not a thing that I've ever attempted to use humourously (I'll stick to variations on "all your base belong to us", thanks) but I shall be extra-sure to avoid it.

[momijizukamori]

Yeah, my understanding is that it was from either Japanese media translations or random insertion of English words into Japanese media in contexts that don't completely make sense, and most of the people I see using it do it more as a silly/cutesy thing (along with inserting Japanese words into English in contexts that may not make sense)

[azurelunatic]

I'm glad that most of the contexts you see it in are people who mean no harm.

[azurelunatic]

Specific instances does indeed make things make sense, and I can see how it would be funny as a random misspelling, but I can't really unsee the whole "flied lice" thing, you know? :/

[torrilin]

If I'm doing this kind of thing, it's pronounced WICTORY! Why? My family is a mix of French Canadian, Austrian, and Scandinavian. So the German W sound for V is culturally appropriate for me. Bonus, I'm Catholic and I know Latin. And the primary inflection set I learned is the Germanic one, where W is used for V.

If you type it tho, it's still VICTORY! Because languages are rarely 100% phonetic.

I figure it's fine to make fun of myself and my cultural background, but it's not so cute to make fun of other people.

I didn't know until the last 5 years or so, but the V/W thing could also be seen as making fun of someone with an Indonesian accent. It's very tricky to tell a slight Indonesian accent from a slight German accent, and Indonesian doesn't really use the V sound the way English does.

[azurelunatic]

And it's a lot easier to not stumble into something genuinely hurtful when it's your own culture, you know?

[silverflight8]

Standard Mandarin does have an r/l contrast, eg minimal pair rè/lè, 热/乐 have the same tone, same vowel, same everything but the words are different and the only contrast is the consonant (I just picked two very common words, "hot" and "happy" - translating the latter not well, it's usually used in a two words set and takes on many diff meanings). Also ru/lu. Peobably a few more sets but typing on a phone is painful. Some speakers of other dialects don't have the same r or say r and l with the same consonant but standard Mandarin certainly does have a phonological, not just phoenetic, difference.

[azurelunatic]

Ooo, nifty! And I see why you would not want to type these things on a phone.

[kaberett]

YES THANK YOU