How to pronounce the letter L in European Spanish? (With examples and IPA)


Today we are going to learn the pronunciation of the letter ‘L’ in european spanish and for that purpose we are going to use a little bit of IPA.
The letter L has 2 very distinctive pronunciations:
The first one is the sound /l/, which is the same sound as the soft /l/ sound in English, like at the beginning of the word ‘level’
It is used when it is not duplicated.
Some examples are: lugar, algo, ventanal, luna, lejos, listo

The second one is the sound /ʝ/ and it is used when the letter L is duplicated, like in lluvia, allá, valla, zapatatilla, llevar, llover.
Please pay attention to this pronunciation as it changes in different regions and it is the same sound as the letter ‘Y’.

Note: There is a version of this video in Spanish.