# Pronunciation - ll



## Tatzingo

Hello,

A frequent sound in the spanish language is the double "ll" which is found in many words such as "Bello". 

My question is this; In Spain, what is the correct way to pronounce this?

I've heard this "LL" in spanish being pronounced in a similar way to "J" as in Jack and also as a "Y" sound as in Yes.

Is this a regional difference or a social/geographic one?

Tatz.

Ps. Come on you linguists, this is your time to shine ;-)


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## Cracker Jack

In Spain double L is pronounced as the English Y. 

Calle = caye
Caballo = cabayo
Cebollas = ceboyas
Silla = siya

The pronunciation as J or ZH of the double LL is used in Argentina.


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## Bienvenidos

LL is pronounced mostly as a "y", but it does vary by region. You will find that Argentina is probably the nation that has the most varied Spanish pronounciation; they pronounce it as more of a J sound. They also pronounce "y" like "sh" in the English word "show". 

Examples:

Estrella 
(es-tray-ya)

Caballero
(ca-bah-yer-o)

Caballo
(ca-bah-yo)

*Bienvenidos*


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## Masood

Hi
You might want to think of it as similar to the double-L in _million_. It's not a bad approximation.


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## Tatzingo

Thanks for all the replies.

But i was wondering whether anyone knew specifically which regions used the J/ZH sound? I'm just looking for a couple of examples within Spain rather than an exhaustive list ;-)

Tatz.


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## Bienvenidos

I would say that it is always LL in Spain. However, they speak many other languages in Spain, Castilian Spanish (official) 74%, Catalan 17%, Galician 7%, and Basque 2%. You may come across "ll" in a completely different language, but again, I would say that it is always LL in the areas of Spain where Spanish is spoken. Maybe a native could be of more help.

*Bienvenidos*


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## Gabino

> In Spain double L is pronounced as the English Y.


 
Creo que se pronuncia es como la j del inglés como en Jack y no la Y de yellow


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## DaleC

Jose Ignacio Hualde. 2005. The sounds of Spanish. Cambridge Univeristy Press. 316 pp. 

I will try to read the relevant section tomorrow and post the answer.


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## ilikescotch

the j in jack and y in yes sounds the same to me, when it comes to the sound of ll in spanish. except in argentina, uruguay, and i dunno if also in chile; where it sounds like sh


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## vince

I've heard of four pronunciations:
a.) y as in yes (IPA: j)
b.) ly as in English "million" or Italian "gli" (IPA: lambda)
c.) zh - as in English "meaSure" or French "je" (IPA: 3)
d.) something in between a.) and c.) (IPA: j with a curl instead of the usual hook)

I try to do d.) when I'm reciting something in Spanish but I'm not a native speaker so don't follow me blindly.


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## DaleC

Contrary to what one might suppose from some responses by Spaniards, the palatal lateral pronunciation is still considered standard in Spain (A.R. Mestre, see here). On the other hand, that doesn't mean it's the majority pronunciation.





			
				vince said:
			
		

> I've heard of four pronunciations:
> a.) y as in yes (IPA: j)
> b.) ly as in English "million" or Italian "gli" (IPA: lambda)
> c.) zh - as in English "meaSure" or French "je" (IPA: 3)
> d.) something in between a.) and c.) (IPA: j with a curl instead of the usual hook)
> 
> I try to do d.) when I'm reciting something in Spanish but I'm not a native speaker so don't follow me blindly.


 At least in Mexico, (d) is less common than its affricate counterpart (which would bring your list to five items). I heard the affricate in Barcelona, too (among Spaniards, not immigrants). 

The IPA symbol for the palatal lateral is not quite lower case lambda. It is rather rotated lower case 'y' that is also raised to rest on the bottom of the line of letters (and not descend below the bottom of the line, never mind that in the above mentioned reference by Mestre on the Web, printing problems cause it to descend).


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## martinkaen

En Argentina (pero solo algunas provincias) suena como "sh" (por ejemplo "should")

 Bello = Besho

 Caballo = Cabasho

 Esto es bastante raro y solo caracteristico en Argentina y Uruguay.

 Suerte!


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## Maeron

I was taught that in Spain (unlike Latin America), LL is pronounced like the _lli_ in "mi*lli*on." From the answers above, this is apparently not true, as people are suggesting pronunciations similar to those in Latin America ("y" or "zh"). What's the true story, then?


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## coro

Maeron said:
			
		

> I was taught that in Spain (unlike Latin America), LL is pronounced like the _lli_ in "mi*lli*on."


I have learnt the same thing too, but from what I've read about this subject, it seems that most people in Spain these days are actually "yeístas"...i.e. they pronounce the "ll" as "y".
Would be interesting to know what someone from Spain has to say about this!


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## hhcc

hi people! 
Let's see the differences between "ll" and "y". 
As far as I know...
- "LL" must be pronounced in general like "y" in "yes".
- "Y" must be pronounced in general like "j" in Jack but softer.
In Argentina and Uruguay they use to pronounce both "ll" and "y" like "sh" in "shout" (e.g.).
In the Mainland on Spain they have some variations. E.g. in Ávila, Madrid, Salamanca... they use to pronounce both "ll" and "y" as "y".
In the Canary Islands (Spain) people pronounces "ll" like "ll" and "y" like "y", though in some places they still keep the originall "ll" sound, which is like "gl" in "gli" in italian.

I hope that it could be helpful!

Regards!

ps. ppl from Argentina, Uruguay, Ávila... and so on... correct me if you think that I'm wrong, please. Thank you!


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## Bienvenidos

Por ejemplo:

En Argentina: Yo estoy = Sho estoy.

*Bienvenidos*


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## estreshita

hola!! yo creo que es como en ingles..
fue cambiando la pronunciacion con el pasar de los anios ( no tengo enie )
pero la forma de escribir ( la gramatica ) se mantiene..
como el sonido de la "v" o la "b" ya ni se diferencian y se pronuncian igual y tienes que recurrir a libros de gramatica y ver las "reglas" para saber si x palabra se escribe con V,B, lo mismo con Y,LL..
el sonido es igual..
lluvia : iuvia
yo : io
aunque en argentina seria ( en algunas regiones )
lluvia : shuvia
yo: sho

chauuu


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## hhcc

Bienvenidos said:
			
		

> Por ejemplo:
> 
> En Argentina: Yo estoy = Sho estoy.
> 
> *Bienvenidos*


 

Exactly!  You got it!  
But if you wanna write exactly how they would pronounce that sentence, you would have to write the following:

Yo estoy = /sho ehtoy/

That's because argentinians, as most of the spanish speakers (some ppl in Central America, mostly South America, Canarians and many ppl from Andalucía and Extremadura [in Spain]), don't pronounce the "S" sound when that letter goes before a consonant. Some other ppl don't pronounce them either when they are at the end of the word. E.g. /tú ehtáh/ (you are).


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## Jellby

Do not be troubled by the pronunciation of "ll", almost any way between "mission" and "million" would be fine. It's not as other letters, which can easily tell you're not a native: aspirated "t", "r", vowels...


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## Bienvenidos

Argentinians also use "vos" instead of "tú" and generally speaking, present-tense verbs take the following second person singular endings of _ás(__-ar_ verbs), _és_ (_-er_ verbs), and _í_ (_-ir_ verbs). Since the accent is on the final syllable, you won't find the stem changes that you do when _tú_ is used. For example: 2nd singular of tener (usually tienes) is _tenés. 2nd Singular of Poder: (usually puedes) is __podés_. Also, _sos is used for ser. For example, vos sos inteligente _in regular Spanish would be "tú eres inteligente"; the English, in both cases, would be "you are smart/intelligent". 

Vos is also used in parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Central America, and Northwestern/Southern South America.

*Bienvenidos*


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## hhcc

Bienvenidos said:
			
		

> Argentinians also use "vos" instead of "tú" and generally speaking, present-tense verbs take the following second person singular endings of _ás(__-ar_ verbs), _és_ (_-er_ verbs), and _í_ (_-ir_ verbs). Since the accent is on the final syllable, you won't find the stem changes that you do when _tú_ is used. For example: 2nd singular of tener (usually tienes) is _tenés. 2nd Singular of Poder: (usually puedes) is __podés_. Also, _sos is used for ser. For example, vos sos inteligente _in regular Spanish would be "tú eres inteligente"; the English, in both cases, would be "you are smart/intelligent".
> 
> Vos is also used in parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Central America, and Northwestern/Southern South America.
> 
> *Bienvenidos*


 

hi,
just a short note...
"sos" replaces "eres". The thing about endings would be as you said except i (-ir) that is "is". 
e.g.
- vb. "ESTÁS" --> ¿(tú) estás? - ¿(vos) estás?
- vb. "VER" --> ¿(tú) ves? - ¿(vos) ves?
- vb. "VENIR" ---> ¿(tú) vienes? - ¿(vos) venis? (/venís/ like 2nd plural person: vosotros venis?)


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## dassin

Bienvenidos said:
			
		

> Vos is also used in parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Central America, and Northwestern/Southern South America.



And Colombia. (Un saludo a todos los antioqueños y antioqueñas. )

Oops, yes, "Northwestern" South America.


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## yuxtapuesta

In my experience, in the North of Mexico (specifically referring to Monterry here) it's a very hard dj sound.  For example I was talking to a friend of a friend from Monterry and I asked her what her "apellido" is, and with  my mixed accent (it's fairly neutral, very Mexican but not highly regionalized) she had no idea what I was asking.  I was saying "ap-ay-yee-do" and to her the word is "ap-ay-djee-do".  

On the other hand, I am acquainted with a professor who is rather old-school and he's from...okay, can't remember.  Spain, though.  He very definitely says "cas-tell-yano" and "ca-bal-yo".  

On yet another hand, as has been more well stated above, for many in Argentina, the sound is a "sh".  Eg "la plasha" (playa).

And in many more neutral forms of Spanish, the ll sound is a y with the occasional English J sound thrown in.  

It's really a mish-mosh and as someone said, as long as you pick one, almost everybody will understand you quite fine.  

HTH!


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## DaleC

As promised, I have consulted Hualde 2005. 

IN SPAIN, there is no "correct" way. There is the standard way (which traditionally was the pronunciation of the masses of speakers except in Andalusia), and there is the real world way now used by the masses of speakers. 

You can cut and paste IPA symbols here: International Phonetic Alphabet. 





> § 11.2.2 The fate of the lateral palatal /ʎ /: _yeísmo_ and related phenomena
> 
> [. . .] For Spanish speakers who have this phoneme, _pollo_ [póʎo] is not confused with _polio_ [póle̯o]. . . -- the 'e' should be an 'i' --
> 
> Even though, at some historical point, all Spanish dialects must have had the palatal lateral phoneme, nowadays it is part of the phonological system of only a minority of Spanish speakers. Phonological desciptions of Standard Peninsular Spanish produced in the first part of the twentieth century, and even more recent ones, include the palatal lateral /ʎ / as part of the inventory in this variety (e.g., [. . .] Quilis 1993; Martínez Celdrán _et al_. 2003). The fact is, however, that the great majority of speakers in Spain under the age of fifty or so have merged this phoneme with /ʝ / and do not distinguish between for instance, _pollo_ 'chicken' and _poyo_ 'stone bench', both pronounced [póʝo]. As mentioned in 3.5, the lack of contrast between the sounds corresponding to orthographic _ll_ and orthographic prevocalic _y_ is known as _yeísmo_. [. . . .] The existence of _yeísmo _has been attested since the end of the Middle Ages, but until very recently, within Spain, it was confined mostly to Andalusia, and not even to the whole of this region. In the last century or so, however, _yeísmo _has become the dominant pronunciation and *the lateral palatal phoneme /ʎ / is consistently preserved only in some rural areas, primarily of northeastern Spain*. -- emphasis by DaleC -- We may note that the same process took place in French some time earlier. [pp. 179-180]



Explanations of notation from the same book. 





> -- The 'e' in all the *e*̯s below should be 'i' or 'u' as appropriate -- § 1.6 The International Phonetic Alphabet: advantages and shortcomings [. . .] To indicate GLIDES (as in the bolded sounds in _p*i*enso, pe*i*ne, s*u*elo, a*u*la_), the IPA alphabet offers two choices. One is to use the symbols [j] and [w]: [pjénso], [péjne], [swélo], [áwla]. The second choice, which we adopt here, is to indicate the fact the sounds in question form a syllable with an adjacent vowel by means of a subscript diacritic: [pe̯énso], [pée̯ne], [se̯élo], [áe̯la]. [Author's note: "In the system of the _Revista de Filología Española_ different symbols are used for prevocalic and postvocalic glides: [pjénso], [swélo] vs [pée̯ne], [áe̯la]."] [p 16]


 The IPA subscript in question, means "the sound is nonsyllabic". 

And as to variation in the realization of the phoneme spelled orthographically with _y_: 





> [. . .] in Spanish the pronunciation of _y_ in words such as _yeso_ and _mayo_ (and also of _ll_ for most speakers) can range from a sound similar to that in English _Yale_ to a sound that resembles that in English _jail_, even leaving aside more radically different pronunciations of this phoneme, as are found, for instance, in Argentinian Spanish. The IPA provides at least four symbols [j], [ʝ], [ɟ], and [ʤ], signifying differences in the degree of constriction. [. . .] We will transcribe _yeso_ as [ʝéso] when no particular dialect is being considered. [pp 16-17]


 Protest: what Hualde calls [ʤ] is really [ɟʝ] or [ʥ] (all three should have the overlying tie mark).


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## Outsider

Some earlier  threads:

pronunciation of -y- and -ll-
ahí + allí


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## mariposita

The difference between y and ll is subtle and very difficult to distinguish, but it still exists. 

My phonetics class did study of this and, in Madrid, the most consistant yeismo that we found was in speakers from points further south. There was also a big difference between older speakers (who were mainly lleistas) and younger speakers (who dabbled in yeismo, but not in a totally consistent manner). We also found that both sounds--y and ll--altered depending upon context and for the purpose of emphasis. For example:

dzegar or dgegar for llegar


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## Angel Gris

Otra opinión desde Argentina:
En la región rioplatense (que incluye a la ciudad de buenos Aires) el sonido varía entre la j de "just" y la sh de "shut", aunque la versión culta es la primera. Sería, para quienes conocen los símbolos de fonética internacional, la d+la z con panza grande. (Espero no ofender a mis coterráneos.)
Lo que no se pronuncia en esta región es la ll como en "million", aunque sí lo hacen en otras regiones de Argentina.


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## moyarangel

Bienvenidos said:
			
		

> I would say that it is always LL in Spain. However, they speak many other languages in Spain, Castilian Spanish (official) 74%, Catalan 17%, Galician 7%, and Basque 2%. You may come across "ll" in a completely different language, but again, I would say that it is always LL in the areas of Spain where Spanish is spoken. Maybe a native could be of more help.


Bienvenidos, I think you are not right. Castillian/Spanish is spoken by almost everybody (I'd say a 99%), but not always as first language. Catalans, Basques or Galicians can choose between speaking it or not because they have their own vernacular language although they do speak spanish.

As for LL in Spanish is just like _Y_ou in english excepting spoken Spanish in Argentina or Uruguay like someone said before


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## mhp

My Spanish teacher was an older woman from the Canary Islands and prided herself on the exact pronunciation of her ll, calling herself a purist. And she did, most of the time, pronounce it as advertised. I think her favorite word was Sevilla. However when she lost composure, her ll’s were pronounced as a clear y sound. I think a similar thing happens in AmE with pronunciation of words such as when/where/whether/etc. A person who aspirates the w may call herself a purist. To most others it sounds pretentious.

  As for myself, when I lived in Madrid, I pronounced it as the y sound and didn’t have any problem except when giving my address. I used to live in «plaza del alamillo» and I always had a hard time with that. If I pronounced it as “alamiyo” people would inevitably ask me to repeat the word. Then I had to either make the ‘y’ sound very strong “alamiyyyyo” or simple say “ala-mi-jo”. 

  BTW, plaza del alamillo is next to the plaza de la paja which was always a source of jokes especially around Christmas when tocaban la zambomba en la plaza de la paja.


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## qbn1der

For what it's worth, it doesn't much matter.  In Cuba, the sound of "ll" is "y" as in "yes," not million.  Cubans, however, are notorious for fast speech and chopping off words, so hearing the sound "j" is not uncommon, especially in an informal, friendly (or argumentative) conversation  The sound "sh" is common in Argentina, Uruguay, parts of Colombia and parts of Spain.  In Cuba we would consider it an affectation.

Last, but not least, my entire "gallego" family family pronounces our name, Trillo, as in "yes."


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## Ynez

mhp said:


> I used to live in «plaza del alamillo» and I always had a hard time with that. If I pronounced it as “alamiyo” people would inevitably ask me to repeat the word. Then I had to either make the ‘y’ sound very strong “alamiyyyyo” or simple say “ala-mi-jo”.



Have you finally understood why they didn't know what you were saying till you pronounced the "ll" like the English "j"? 




This is a topic with unnecessary confusion. 

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/spanish/frameset.html

africadas --> dz


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