Originally Posted By: The Pook
The ellya is actually more like lyama than yama - it's just the 'l' version of the enya (ñ). But that's too hard for many English speakers to say, so they simplify it to yama.


They do use that pronunciation in a few areas, but in the US, anyway, you would never hear someone put any hint of /l/ in a word with "ll", nor would you be able to find anyone teaching it that way, nor any teaching resources that even mention it.

 Originally Posted By: The Pook
Or 'zh' or 'dzh'. In Argentina they say it like that. And maybe Uruguay?


Most probably they do! Most of SA uses some variation along those lines. The straight ll=y is taught because it is "standard", and easiest to say, as it's a frequently used phoneme in English, whereas all our mentioned variations are less familiar, and therefore less comfortable. :0)