<l> and <ll>

You can listen to two speakers here. The man is from North Wales and the woman is from South Wales. In the clips, you will hear examples of words containing <l> and <ll>. The <ll> sound is called a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative and it is generally a very uncommon sound in the world’s languages. 

Looking at the clips, compare the words containing <l> and the words containing <ll>. You will see that a larger part of the tongue (the tongue blade) approaches the top of the mouth when saying <ll>. This differs from <l> where only the tip of the tongue approaches the top of the mouth.

There is a difference between how the two speakers say <l> too but there is no need to worry about this difference if you are learning the language! In the north, the tongue rises towards the back of the mouth. In the south, the tongue does not rise which makes <l> sound different in the two areas. Can you hear the difference?

The common term for the northern <l> is ‘dark-l’. Conversely, the terms ‘light-l’ or ‘clear-l’ can be used to describe the general quality of this consonant sound in the south.