Re: English l and Spanish ll

> Adam Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious <AczJ5@...> wrote:
> >Also, is the Spanish ll (in the accents where it sounds similar to /dZ/)
> >/z*/ or /L/?
Definitely not [L] in those dialects.  I believe [L] is the Madrid
pronunciation, and therefore the official one of the language as
standardized by the Royal Academy, but it doesn't sound anything like
English [dZ)].

Across the Spanish-speaking world, |ll| is probably the most variable of
all the Spanish sounds, but almost all of the values you find for it are
in the "Palatal" column of the IPA chart, and specifically in the right-hand
(voiced) half of that column: [L], [j], [j\], [J\j\)].

To English speakers, [L] sounds a lot like the sequence [lj] run together
("lli" in "million" is the canonical example); [j] sounds just like the English
"y" in "you"; [j\] sounds like [Z] ("s" in "measure"); and [J\j\)] sounds like
[dZ)] ("j" in "job").  All of these equivelances (except [j] = "y") are only
approximations, however, since the other sounds don't appear in English.

Not only the phonetic realization but also the degree of phonemicity
varies; in some dialects, |y|, |ll|, and prevocalic |i| (which is almost
always [j]) are all pronounced differently; in other dialects, two of
those three are grouped together while the third is different; and in
yet other dialects, all three sound the same.

-Marcos