Llama or lama?

Well, that depends in what language you are writing…

In Spanish the doble L is another letter with its own sound, we call it “ellie”. Let me try to explain: The Spanish “ll” is not pronounced like an English or German double L. In these languages “ll” just means a longer “l” sound. But in Spanish, it gets trickier to explain because many countries use different pronunciations of Spanish. For example, in the Spanish spoken in Spain, “ll” represents a sound that is more like a German “j”, as in Jahr, Jetzt. Whereas the sound that is common in Argentina and Uruguay is the “sh” Sound. Most speakers in these regions have shifted the “ll” and “y” sound, which sound like the English “sh” in shoe or the German “sch” in Schal.

Going back to the llama, this animal’s name was taken from Quechua, the native language of the Andes and in turn from Spanish, and in Spanish, its name is spelled with LL because it’s pronounced differently.