Universal pronunciations

Universal pronunciations
 

I didn´t know where I could post this..

Yesterday, my friend from Brazil who was taught by a Colombian teacher told me that the word "pollo" is always pronounced the English 'Y' sound and it never can sound like the English 'J' sound. We are students in the same Spanish class in Mexico. I went to my next class and asked my phonetics teacher if there are any other words like this and she said "ella" which I think I've heard it pronounced differently in Medellín, Colombia but I am not 100% sure.

I remember saying "pollo" with the J sound and my Spanish grammar teacher corrected my pronunciation but I never asked her.

yeísmo = y and ll sound like y
lleísmo = y and ll sound like ll

pick the one you like; or pronounce both their distinct way -the less common accent-

I think what you actually should learn, accent-wise, is how they pronounce words in the country you're most likely to spend the most time in. After all, being able to mimic the accent of a particular area will make you sound more native than trying to use a mix of pronunciations. Remember, there are many regional differences. Your best bet, in my opinion, is to choose one region.
Think about your own usage of English. The way you pronounce words is closely related to where you live and you seldom vary that pronunciation, except when you want to sound funny or foreign, for effect or amusement.

well, i have a mixed accent. I will say things like: Yo, llamar, llegar, llover, parrilla, allá with lleismo. Its probably because I learned the basics first from Colombians but other words like: ayer, calle, pollo, allí, ayuda, quesadilla with Yeismo. At this point, it's just ingrained in my head to say things 1 way or the other except for "allá". I dunno why I switch accents. I was giving a graded speech for my class and said, "Siempre me llamaban en la calle..." with first lleismo then yeismo. I dont know if that is a bad thing but my class for phonetics, she teaches us to use lleísmo only.

The final thing I learned in the phonetics and phonology class is reslibification. An example my teacher gave us is:
Mi amigo usa su celular azul
mia-mi-gou-sa-su-ce-lu-la-ra-zul

I asked my friend to read the sentence before I showed her the resilibification. She is a native speaker and told me that it is not normal for her to do that and it was more of a style castelleno. I'm not sure because the hardest part of Spanish for me is the listening comprehension. I know in a lot of songs I listen to, I can look up the letters and then see that the words are resilibified. Do people just choose to do this or not or is it depending on location, etc?

Unless your friend is a student of linguistics, it is likely that she has not been taught formally about the topic of re-syllabication; the best she can probably do for you is to tell you whether something sounds right or sounds wrong, but she may not be able to tell you much more than that.

That said, the re-syllabication you refer to is an accurate model for how most native speakers from most regions speak naturally, except perhaps for when they are speaking in a formal setting or otherwise paying special attention to exactly how they are saying something.

I hear yeísmo and lleísmo mixed all the time. Lleísmo is used for emphasis sometime. Example: ¿Donde?
Alla. (yeísmo)
¿Aquí?
¡No, alla! (lleísmo)