Re: Misperceptions of Spanish pronunciation?

From: M. Ranjit Mathews (ranjit_mathews_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 11/21/04 

Date: 21 Nov 2004 04:07:10 -0800

uaxuctum@hotmail.com (Javier BF) wrote ...
> Ruud Harmsen <realemailseesite01@rudhar.com.invalid> wrote ...
> > 18 Nov 2004 19:20:24 -0800: ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com (M. Ranjit
> > Mathews): in sci.lang:
> >
> > >Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@wxs.nl> wrote ...
> > >> Llave/calle: <ll> stands for palatal /l^/,
> > >
> > >I find it difficult to imagine how that ought to sound. Is there a
> > >sound sample of anyone pronouncing a palatal l as a palatal l (while
> > >speaking any language)?
>
> I can record a sample of my own speech and send it to your
> e-mail if you like.

Thank you so much. That won't be necessary if this is correct:
http://www.askoxford.com/languages/it/toi_italian/pronunciation/?view_uk

> Italian "gli" is usually geminate, while Spanish "ll" isn't.

Yes; the words sound like <tallyatelle> and <fillyo>

> to me, the natural way to pronounce the phoneme "y" is with
> a palatal sound, either fricative [j\] or affricate [Jj\], and
> the postalveolar affricate allophone I only use in when it is
> following an alveolar (as in "cónyuge"). As for Carrasquer's
> comment about its range of allophones, for me hearing the glide
> [j] for "y" (or "ll") automatically labels the speaker as a
> non-native, because [j] I perceive clearly as an allophone
> of vowel "i" (as in "hierro") and never of consonant "y" (as
> in "yerro"), so [jo] sounds to me as if they were saying "hio"
> instead of "yo", which in my experience is a very typical and
> recognizable trait of foreigners' pronunciation.

It looks like your "y" is like a French "j"; to me, the difference
between vowel [i] and consonant [j] is characterized by the difference
between Portugese "hielo" and English "yellow".

> It would be fine that the guys at IPA decided at long last to
> introduce individual symbols to properly represent the vowel phonemes
> of the third most spoken language (I think those sounds occur in a
> bunch of other languages as well), considering that they have already
> introduced an individual symbol for that Swedish "khsh" sound that
> is merely a dialectal allophone not contrasting phonemically with
> [S].

The sound is not only in Swedish; it has its own grapheme in Devnagri,
is a phoneme in Indian languages and is used by more people than speak
Spanish.

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