26/12/2017 A true story of Eisenhower and Prime Minister Abe’s grandfather

              I would like to tell a true story to those who are relaxing in this holiday season.
              Japanese people are not good at distinguishing clearly ‘L’ from ‘R’ when pronouncing English. One reason is that the Japanese language does not have ‘L’ and both ‘L’ and ‘R’ in English sound almost the same to Japanese people. Another is that Japanese ‘R’ is different from English ‘R.’ Incidentally, ‘R’ seems to be a consonant which is pronounced quite differently among different languages. For instance, French ‘R’ is different from the above two.
              Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s maternal grandfather is Nobusuke Kishi, who was also a prime minister of Japan. Kishi liked to play golf and enjoyed golfing with US President Dwight David Eisenhower (Ike), just as Abe did with Donald Trump.
              One day Kishi said to Ike pronouncing unconsciously ‘R’ instead of ‘L,’ “When do you have an election?” Ike showed a very puzzled expression on his face.

Comments and questions are welcome.
Kazuhiro Arai’s English twitter:        https://twitter.com/araikazuhiroe88
Kazuhiro Arai’s Japanese blog:         https://araikazuhiro.blogspot.jp/
Kazuhiro Arai’s Japanese twitter:      https://twitter.com/araikazuhiro88
Kazuhiro Arai’s Japanese home page:   http://araikazuhiro.world.coocan.jp/

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