how to pronounce these letters correctly...."ll"..."y" in words like "mayor"...???? I see some people pronounce it as, a J sound...

Question

and please let me know the different veiws from different countries.. muchas gracias a todos.

Answer 1

You have opened a big polemic here.

In Argentina both the Y and the LL are pronounced like the J in just. it is probably a bit more guttural but the same sound quality.

In Spain and most of South America they are pronounced the 'Castilian' way.

Y is pronounced as the Y in yet, that is like a short i, so Yo is ee-oh.

LL is pronounce like the letters lee in English, but the ee sound is shorter. But let's be honest that is a very bad approximation. So the word llama is pronouned lee-ah-mah.

I suggest that for LL you get some native speakers to demonstrate.

Final note the Y is considered a short vowel when pronounced the Castillian way. This means that even though it forms a diphtong it is never the stressed vowel. It also never takes an accent like other vowels.

Hope this helps.

R

PS remember that the LL is a letter not a double L. In the dictionary you will find lora before Llora, ie all L.... words before all LL.... words.

Answer 2

It does depend on the country... and in fact you will even find differences within the country.

I only have personal experience with Colombia and Mexican spanish. I don't know any Mexicans that pronounce either "y" or "ll" other than "yuh" (like the previous example, in "yet").

In Colombia, cities like Cali and Bogota mostly pronounce those like "yuh". However in Medellin and some coastal cities they pronounce both like "j" as in "justice" (as the previous Argentinian example above). My fiancee is from Medellin, and I have a friend from highschool that is from Cali, so I get to practice with two native speakers in both ways.

So, I would find some newscasts or videos of native speakers of the country you want to visit and pick up their dialect. In Dominican Republic that have a VERY distinct dialect that be hard to pick up at first...such as making ending 'r's not sound like an 'r' at all, and just their manner of speech. Other parts drop 's's out of words (like what I've heard of Argentinian).