Ll is an aspirated version of "l". Put your mouth and tongue into the shape that it takes to say an L, then breathe out like you're huffing an "H". You will probably shower spit over anyone in front of you. I assume that fluent Welsh speakers don't actually drench their companions when speaking to them, but as my semester in Wales was spent mostly in the company of other Americans instead of Welsh people*, I was showered by many a well-meaning American.
The non-well-meaning Americans took the shortcut of pronouncing "ll" as "cl", which is just wrong, wrong, wrong, and I still get twitchy when I hear someone saying "Clanecli" instead of "Llanelli". (Their mistake comes from hearing the short aspirated "ll" and mistaking it for "cl", but I think it's on the order of thinking that the Japanese are saying "r" for "l" and "l" for "r" when the truth is that it is one sound somewhere in between.)
Mind you, I wouldn't pronounce "Pwyll" on a dare without hearing it spoken several times by a native speaker first
* An annoyance about that program, which segregated one-semesters together, and put the yearlong students in with Welsh students, to avoid disrupting the Welsh students by giving them new roomies every semester. The effect was that we tended not to mingle with them, which sort of voids the point of studying abroad.
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Date: 2010-03-02 07:27 pm (UTC)Ll is an aspirated version of "l". Put your mouth and tongue into the shape that it takes to say an L, then breathe out like you're huffing an "H". You will probably shower spit over anyone in front of you. I assume that fluent Welsh speakers don't actually drench their companions when speaking to them, but as my semester in Wales was spent mostly in the company of other Americans instead of Welsh people*, I was showered by many a well-meaning American.
The non-well-meaning Americans took the shortcut of pronouncing "ll" as "cl", which is just wrong, wrong, wrong, and I still get twitchy when I hear someone saying "Clanecli" instead of "Llanelli". (Their mistake comes from hearing the short aspirated "ll" and mistaking it for "cl", but I think it's on the order of thinking that the Japanese are saying "r" for "l" and "l" for "r" when the truth is that it is one sound somewhere in between.)
Mind you, I wouldn't pronounce "Pwyll" on a dare without hearing it spoken several times by a native speaker first
* An annoyance about that program, which segregated one-semesters together, and put the yearlong students in with Welsh students, to avoid disrupting the Welsh students by giving them new roomies every semester. The effect was that we tended not to mingle with them, which sort of voids the point of studying abroad.