Couple of questions to check what I think I’m hearing in SSinSpanish. I’m at Level 1, Challenge 7 (after a week!):
In lleva, I think I hear Rosa and especially Gaby adding a little something that sounds like the Welsh LL to the “yuh” sound of the Spanish “LL”.
I hear a very light Welsh CH for the J in words like mejorar. (I’m really hoping that’s right, because I find it hard to make that a pure H sound!)
Do these sound close enough to be going on with?
Hi @tahl - I haven’t tried this myself, but I did recently do the lessons that exist for Spanish via Welsh, and I think it’s the same two speakers.
mejorar sounds spot on - it shouldn’t just be an ‘h’ 
For ll it’s “officially” “supposed” to be a -ly- sound, more or less like the middle of English ‘million’. Speakers in many areas drop the l, though, and just say it like an English y, and I think that’s roughly what Rosa does. In some parts of South America - particularly Argentina - both y and ll are then strengthened to a sound like the s in the middle of English ‘measure’, or even to a sound like English ‘j’ as in ‘judge’, and I think this is what Gaby does. (My old Catalan tutor told me he once came across an English phrasebook for Spanish speakers that told the reader to pronounce the English personal name ‘George’ as llorll - he initially just thought it was just weird, before realizing that it must have been written by an Argentinian. He checked, and found it was first published in Buenos Aires.) It shouldn’t sound like a Welsh ll, though, so if you’re in doubt about what you’re hearing I’d stick with ‘y’ or ‘ly’ for the time being.
Diolch am yr ymateb. The j = Welsh ch is a relief, because that’s the sound I automatically make.
The sound for ll is still a challenge, since a straight y sounds off to me relative to Rosa (never mind Gaby’s Argentinian “sh” sound), but so does an American/English j. I’m going to try to catch what Spanish speakers around here use; they’re mostly from El Salvador and Guatemala.
I’ve just listened to a chunk of L1.7 and I agree with you completely – they’re both doing some sort of strengthened ‘y’ sound. If anything, hers sounds to me like a slightly weakened English j- (almost in-between j- and ch-, maybe), and his a sh- as you’ve written it. I don’t think I’d exactly copy either of them, although that’s partly because I’m used to European speakers from Catalunya/Valencia, who don’t make quite the same sounds. Trying to catch what you hear in actual use makes sense to me