Re: y sound

Its a palatal approximant. Your tongue is pressed against your palate
(spelt that wrong I think) which is the bit at the top of your mouth
behind the alveolar ridge, and you're blowing air like when you
pronounce l or r rather than creating an audible frission (fricative) or
stopping the air flow completely (stop). Other palatal sounds are the
french and italian gn (spanish represent it with an n with a tilde on
top, its a palatal nasal) , and my dictionary claim spanish has a
lateral palatal approximant as well ll, but I've only ever heard ll
pronounced y. Of course, in english at least y is also used to represent
vowel sounds i: and I. Offhand I can't think of an example of y
representing the diphthong ai like the letter i can do in english, but
there must be one.

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