The double L (Toast of 1282)

The double ‘Ll’ in Cymraeg (Welsh) proves to be a stumbling block for English speakers, who cannot get their tongues around this alien vocabulary. It is difficult to explain phonetically what it sounds like, and thus, has come to symbolize for me, a character of ‘difference’ in the ‘make-up’ of Cymraeg speakers. ‘Ch’ can be addressed and vocalized, as in the Scottish word ‘Loch’, but not ‘Ll’. Words beginning with ‘Ll’ tend to be pronounced ‘Cl’ as in Clandudno instead of Llandudno. Spanish speakers however, have no difficulty with it, it resembles speech sounds in the Spanish language.
Words beginning with LL, when I trawled through the dictionary, also seemed to be overly concerned with loss … or certainly they seemed so to me, and I created a series of works based on a tragic moment in Welsh history, the murder (llofruddiaeth) of our last native prince (llyw olaf) Llewelyn in 1282. All the words begin with the llythrennau (letters)‘Ll’.