Thank you for the responses, that seems clear enough to me. Pronouncing Tsing Tao beer as "ching dow" (I think that's right) also now makes some sense.

Interesting side note, brought to mind by the mention of R and L not being distinguished by most Orientals--recent research has shown that if certain sounds aren't heard by infants by the time they reach about six months of age, they do not develop the ability to differentiate them. The examples include certain gutturals in Scandinavian languages that vex speakers of English. Apparently most speakers of Asian tongues simply do not hear R and L as being different from each other.