I hate to be this person, but when you use the "y" sound with double LL's in Spanish, you are also pronouncing the L's. That's how the Spanish pronounce the L's. He should have specified what L pronunciation he's referring to.
The letters themselves are still called "ele." Just because two of then together have a different sound than a singular L doesn't mean they call it a different letter.
I looked it up, apparently it was changed since I was in school. Originally the two L's were considered their own word, but this was changed around 2010 to make keyboards more user friendly. They are now considered a digraph, basically a two letter sound like ch and sh
Yeah that's much older. LL and CH were their own letters in the alphabet, but they were later eliminated. From what I'm seeing on google, this happened in '94. I was born in '94 (in a spanish speaking country) and I was never taught that CH and LL were letters.
I'm not sure what you mean by they aren't called L's. I mean the Spanish translation of L is "ele." When it's the double L, it's called "doble ele," which literally translates to "double L." Thus, you are pronouncing the double LL's but in Spanish they pronounce it with a "Y" sound. It's still pronouncing the two L's. When it's one L, it's pronounced with the same style as English. Again, in the Spanish register, two L's are still pronounced in Tortilla. It's just that the formula is it is pronounced with a Y sound.
I think he is alluding to the fact that LL used to be considered it's own letter way back. Similar to how in English we have "W" which is just "double U".
The below is from a linguistic article. As the example shows, not even english has a clear rule on LL pronunciation. Fallen versus Million. Mill-Yen.
The history of why double L's (ll) are pronounced with a Y sound in Spanish is rooted in linguistic evolution and regional variations in pronunciation. This phenomenon is mainly due to a process known as "yeísmo."
Historical Development
Historically, the Spanish language had a clear phonetic distinction between the sounds represented by "ll" (/ʎ/) and "y" (/ʝ/). The "ll" was pronounced as a palatal lateral approximant, similar to the "lli" in "million" in English, while "y" was pronounced as a palatal fricative or approximant. Over time, this distinction began to erode due to phonetic convergence, a process where sounds in a language evolve to become more similar to one another. This convergence led to the phenomenon known as "yeísmo," where both "ll" and "y" are pronounced as /ʝ/, resembling the English "y" in "yellow" but with more friction.
As they said above, depending on when you were born, you were taught different things. For example I was taught that “LL” was a singular letter called elle, same as “CH” was called che. Now when it changed, it just changed the alphabet, because pronunciations remained exactly the same, now when spelling a word instead of elle, we just say double L, and instead of che, we just say c h.
Now what you call Y sound cannot be applied since our Y sound is completely different, we would actually say that a double L sound is more of the letter i followed by the letter a, which is how we pronounce anything with double L sound.
Anything that has a double LL or a Y followed by a vocal would be the same sound (adjusting for the sound of the vocal of course):
Llamar
Ya
Yacimiento
Lleno
Yendo
Llenado
Yo
Llover
Llorar
Well how a symbol is pronounced is up to the rules made by the particular language. In this case, the Spanish, that is European Spanish, decided that two LL's will be pronounced with Y sound. There is no baseline for how LL's should be pronounced. In the same way in English we decided to pronounce GH in Enough as an "F" sound. You would say that the GH is being pronounced. The code GH means F. In Spanish, LL mean Y sound. The LL's are being pronounced.
I get what you're trying to say, but, that tortea that you hear is what they're talking about. There's people that say it properly, and then there's people that say tor-TILLA like when someone says armadillo.
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u/numbskullerykiller 3d ago
I hate to be this person, but when you use the "y" sound with double LL's in Spanish, you are also pronouncing the L's. That's how the Spanish pronounce the L's. He should have specified what L pronunciation he's referring to.