On Wed, 15 May 2019 03:09:57 -0700 (PDT), Cindy Hamilton
> wrote:

>On Tuesday, May 14, 2019 at 8:18:22 PM UTC-4, Sheldon wrote:
>
>> Typical educated Chinese... Fly Lice!
>
>It's not about education. Your brain imprints on language as a
>baby, and if your parents' language does not contain a sound,
>later in life you will always have trouble with that sound.
>
>Cindy Hamilton

It's true that we duplicate the phonetics of those around us but if
one makes an effort they can make corrections... many public figures
lose their reginal accents if they so choose. Most colleges offer a
course in public speaking, an elective I chose at UCLA. One of the
first things the instructor does is to have each person read a passage
and record it... at the end of the course each person reads the same
passage and records it... a marked difference. Fact is that most
people cannot recognize their own recorded voice. What we hear while
speaking is very different from hearing our recorded speech, what
others hear. There are exercizes that a voice instructor can offer to
Orientals that will eliminate the L sound for the R sound, it works,
I'd seen it done. Most people who sing professionally have taken
voice courses to correct their speech. There are many people of all
ages whose speech is literally unintelligible, even the highly
educated... the Vet we use is impossible to understand on the phone...
probably because the animals he treats never correct him. He speaks
too fast, there are no spaces between words and his speech pattern
eliminates all punctuation, which is as important in speech as in
writing, more so in phone conversations. These days it's what I call
"Keyboard Speak", they speak as though they are sending a Text.
https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/p...ion-marks.html