Re: Q about /c/

>Hmm.  Orbis Latinus claims that |y| is [j], as do a load of other sites,
>a good chunk of dictionaries, and the tapes from my school Spanish
>course.  Orbis Latinus also claims that the 'official' pronunciation in
>España is that |ll| is [j], my teachers agree.
>
>http://www.orbilat.com/Modern_Romance/Ibero-
Romance/Spanish/Grammar/Spanish-Manners_and_Styles_of_Speech.html#Lleismo

No, that's wrong. Either the ones saying that aren't
aware that the IPA symbol [j] doesn't cover the sound
of [j\] or haven't been made aware that those aren't
the same sound, or else are using [j] because the IPA
character for [j\] is not available. As for the tapes,
it coud be that you didn't pay enough attention to
notice the difference between [j\] and [j], that
they recorded speakers of Spanglish, or maybe that
the quality of the recording is poor.

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/spanish/frameset.html
That's a Latin American yeist accent (he makes
unnatural gestures when trying to pronounce ll as
[L] in the section on laterals and actually only
manages to pronounce a forced [l_jj]). BTW, notice
also how the r in "amarillo" is pronounced as
a _fricative_ flap instead of as a plosive flap,
which is why Japanese r has always sounded to me
different from Spanish ere). Here you can listen
to several accents of Castilian Spanish:
http://cvc.cervantes.es/obref/dvi/

I'm a native speaker of Castilian Spanish myself,
thus what I'm telling you is not hearsay but personal
experience. English "yet" sounds like what in Spanish
orthography I would spell "hiet" (like in "hierro"),
not "yet" (like in "yerro"). Personally, I easily
notice when a foreigner is mispronouncing Spanish y
as [j] and if I were to imitate the average foreign
accent of English speakers, I would say "hiou hia
hiamey" instead of "yo ya llamé". But many other
native speakers (most in fact) aren't _aware_ that
a certain speech is sounding foreign because of the
mispronounciation of y as [j] and will simply say
that "It just sounds foreign, I can't tell you why".

Besides, the 'official' pronounciation of "ll"
(I assume you mean the one taught by the Academy
and in schools as the 'ideal') is [L], but yeismo
is already admitted as correct because it is so
widespread now (which is due in great part to the
fact that national TV is broadcast mostly from
Madrid, which traditionally has been a yeist area).

Cheers,
Javier

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