3 ms·

What you're seeing is the fact that /j/ (English Y as in <you>) is a semivowel, which is paired with /i/ (English long-E as in <feet>). This means that the sou

What you're seeing is the fact that /j/ (English Y as in <you>) is a semivowel, which is paired with /i/ (English long-E as in <feet>). This means that the sounds are almost exactly the same -- the consonant version tends to be a bit more restricted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semivowel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semivowel EDIT: Also, the Spanish <ll> as /ʒ/ (S in English treasure) is not nearly as extent in South America as you might think. It's still mostly limited to Argentina and Uruguay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye%C3%ADsmo#She%C3%ADsmo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye%C3%ADsmo#She%C3%ADsmo EDIT EDIT: I misread the symbols a bit, and in other areas of South and Central America it's /ʝ/ instead of /ʒ/, which is not a very big difference at all. (Palatal vs postalveolar... Basically neighbors.)

DonaldPShimoda 7y ago
> Also, the Spanish <ll> as /ʒ/ (S in English treasure) is not nearly as extent in South America as you might think. It's still mostly limited to Argentina and Uruguay: In Puerto Rican Spanish (at least, my grandmother's family's accent), the <ll> is more of a /dʒj/ sort of thing. "llama" comes out to "djyamma", with the "dj" softened significantly. Not sure how to express that more precisely in IPA, though.
- jdmichal 7y ago
  Maybe /ʝ/? That's the palatal version of /ʒ/, which explains your desire to add a /j/ in there. The Wikipedia I linked is about the merging of <ll> and <y> to /ʝ/ if you want to read more. Interestingly, I don't hear this a lot in the northern Mexican Spanish I hear, even though all of Central America is marked as merged. I didn't read it correctly the first time, and I was wrong to call it out in the first place. The difference between /ʝ/ and /ʒ/ is not so big for me to have said anything.
- ljm 7y ago
  That was precisely what I was trying to allude to :) ‘ll’ is a soft ‘dj’ in Columbia also.

DonaldPShimoda 7y ago

> Also, the Spanish <ll> as /ʒ/ (S in English treasure) is not nearly as extent in South America as you might think. It's still mostly limited to Argentina and Uruguay: In Puerto Rican Spanish (at least, my grandmother's family's accent), the <ll> is more of a /dʒj/ sort of thing. "llama" comes out to "djyamma", with the "dj" softened significantly. Not sure how to express that more precisely in IPA, though.

jdmichal 7y ago
Maybe /ʝ/? That's the palatal version of /ʒ/, which explains your desire to add a /j/ in there. The Wikipedia I linked is about the merging of <ll> and <y> to /ʝ/ if you want to read more. Interestingly, I don't hear this a lot in the northern Mexican Spanish I hear, even though all of Central America is marked as merged. I didn't read it correctly the first time, and I was wrong to call it out in the first place. The difference between /ʝ/ and /ʒ/ is not so big for me to have said anything.
ljm 7y ago
That was precisely what I was trying to allude to :) ‘ll’ is a soft ‘dj’ in Columbia also.