Thanks for writing. Yeah, that thing with the "r"s we Aussies and Brits can be funny (for North American's, I mean). Anyway, the differences between Oz/UK English and North American can be pretty interesting. About Chinese, actually, we were taught 兒 when I studied 普通話 here in Taipei (they call it 華語 or 國語 in Taiwan). It was just skimmed over, as hardly anyone uses it here. But I've met some of my wife's relatives who are from southern China and I was having a little trouble understanding. They seem to curl the tongue a lot more. It's probably not the 兒 I have trouble with but sounds like zhi, chi, shi. Here it is not uncommon to hear them as zi, ci, si. Being in Taiwan too long has kind of ruined my Chinese accent. Used to speak with a lot more standard accent after I got the basics down years ago. Now it is very obvious that I sound like I'm from Taiwan (not necessarily a bad thing though).