Quarrelling

I've begun to coach the school's speech contest students. All over Japan students are coerced into taking part in the English speech contest and mine are no different. If you've seen Lost in Translation then you know that the most problematic aspect of English for Japanese people is the different pronounciation of R and L. Lip my stockings!

Japanese is a sound poor language and the two alphabets (that are alphabets - not the thousands of chinese characters) have characters that are romanised as ra ri ru re and ro but the pronounciation of them is a cross between the English R and L - rrlla rrlli rrllu rrlle rrllo (this is very much an approximation). So when the Japanese students see r or l written down its very confusing and sometimes (for me) hilarious. It is also frustrating as hell.

The two girls I'm tutoring for the contest are great - confident, friendly and now my favourites. We spent about an hour after school trying to master the word quarrel - by the end I couldn't say it but the girl whose speech it's in (twice - oh the cruelty) got it. When she finally said it right she jumped up and ran out of the classroom shouting to her friends outside that she got it. These speech contest kids are giving the elementary kids a run for their position of work highlight.