Voiceless dental and alveolar lateral fricatives

Voiceless dental and alveolar lateral fricatives
ɬ
IPA Number	148
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɬ
Unicode (hex)	U+026C
X-SAMPA	K
Image

The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is ⟨ɬ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ⟨K⟩. The letter ⟨ɬ⟩ is called "belted l" and should not be confused with "l with tilde", ⟨ɫ⟩, which transcribes a different sound, the velarized alveolar lateral approximant. It should also be distinguished from a voiceless alveolar lateral approximant, although the fricative is sometimes incorrectly described as a "voiceless l", a description fitting only of the approximant.

Several Welsh names beginning with this sound have been borrowed into English, where they either retain the Welsh ⟨ll⟩ spelling but are pronounced with an /l/ (Lloyd, Llywelyn), or are substituted with /fl/ (Floyd, Fluellen).

Features

Features of the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a lateral consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream over the sides of the tongue, rather than down the middle.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Although the sound is rare among European languages outside the Caucasus (being found notably in Welsh, where it is written ⟨ll⟩), it is fairly common among Native American languages, such as Navajo, and North Caucasian languages, such as Avar. It is also found in African languages like Zulu, Asian languages like Chukchi and Taishanese, and several Formosan languages and a number of dialects in Taiwan.

Dental or denti-alveolar

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Mapudungun		kagüḻ	[kɜˈɣɘɬ̪]	'phlegm that is spit'	Interdental; possible utterance-final allophone of /l̪/.
Norwegian	Trondheim dialect	sælt	[s̪æɬ̪t̪]	'sold'	Laminal denti-alveolar; allophone of /l/. Also described as an approximant [l̪̊]. See Norwegian phonology

Alveolar

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Adyghe		плъыжь	<phonos file="Plhazh.ogg">[pɬəʑ]</phonos>	'red'
Ahtna		dzeł	[tsəɬ]	'mountain'
Aleut	Atkan dialect	hla	[ɬɑ]	'boy'
Amis	Southern dialect	kudiwis	[kuɬiwis]	'rabbit'
Avar		лъабго	[ˈɬabɡo]	'three'
Basay		lanum	[ɬanum]	'water'
Berber	Ait Seghrouchen	altu	[æˈɬʊw]	'not yet'	Allophone of /lt/
Bunun		ludun	[ɬuɗun]	'mountain'
Bura					Contrasts with [ɮ] and [ʎ̝̊].
Cherokee	Some speakers	ᎥᏝ	[ə̃ʔɬa]	'no'	Corresponds to [tɬ] in the speech of most speakers
Chickasaw		lhinko	[ɬiŋko]	'to be fat'
Chinese	Taishanese	三	[ɬam˧]	'three'
Chukchi		ԓевыт	[ɬeβət]	'head'
Creek		rakkē	[ɬakkiː]	'big'	Historically transcribed thl or tl by English speakers
Dahalo		[ʡáɬi]		'fat'
Eyak		qe'ł	[qʰɛʔɬ]	'woman'
Fali		[paɬkan]		'shoulder'
Faroese		hjálp	[jɔɬp]	'help'
Forest Nenets		[xaɬʲu]		'rain'	Forest Nenets has both plain /ɬ/ and palatalized /ɬʲ/
Greenlandic		illu	[iɬːu]	'house'	Realization of geminated /l/
Hadza		sleme	[ɬeme]	'man'
Haida		tla'únhl	[tɬʰʌʔʊ́nɬ]	'six'
Hmong		hli	<phonos file="Lhi.ogg">[ɬi]</phonos>	'moon'
Icelandic		siglt	[sɪɬt]	'have sailed'
Inuktitut		akłak	[akɬak]	'grizzly bear'	See Inuit phonology
Kabardian		лъы	<phonos file="Circassian Лъ.ogg">[ɬə]</phonos>	'blood'
Kaska		tsį̄ł	[tsʰĩːɬ]	'axe'
Khanty	Surgut dialect	ԓӓпәт	[ˈɬæpət]	'seven'	Contrasts with palatalized /ɬʲ/. Corresponds to /l/ or /t/ in other dialects
	Kazym dialect	ԓапәт	[ˈɬɑpət]
Mapudungun		kaül	[kɜˈɘɬ]	'a different song'	Possible utterance-final allophone of /l/.
Mochica		paxllær	[paɬøɾ]	'lima bean'
Moloko		sla	[ɬa]	'cow'
Nahuatl		āltepētl	[aːɬˈtɛpɛːt͡ɬ]	'city'	Allophone of /l/
Navajo		łaʼ	[ɬaʔ]	'some'	See Navajo phonology
Nisga'a		hloks	[ɬoks]	'Sun'
Norwegian	Trøndersk	tatl / tasl	[tʰɑɬ]	'sissiness'	See Norwegian phonology
Saaroa		rahli	[raɬi]	'chief'
Sahaptin		łp’úł	[ˈɬpʼuɬ]	'tears'
Sandawe		lhaa	[ɬáː]	'goat'
Sassarese		morthu	<phonos file="Sdc-Moltu.wav">[ˈmoɬtu]</phonos>	'dead'
Sotho		ho hlahloba	[ho ɬɑɬɔbɑ]	'to examine'	See Sotho phonology
St’át’imcets		lhésp	[ɬə́sp]	'rash'
Swedish	Jamtlandic	kallt	[kaɬt]	'cold'	See Swedish phonology
Taos		[ɬìˈwēnæ]		'wife'	See Taos phonology
Tera		tleebi	[ɬè̞ːbi]	'side'
Thao		kilhpul	[kiɬpul]	'star'
Tlingit		lingít	[ɬìnkít]	'person; Tlingit'
Tsez		лъи	<phonos file="Lhi.ogg">[ɬi]</phonos>	'water'
Welsh		llall	[ɬaːɬ]	'(the) other'	See Welsh phonology
Yi		ꆧꁨ hlop-bbop	[ɬo˧˩bo˧˩]	'moon'
Zulu		isihlahla	[isiˈɬaːɬa]	'tree'
Zuni		asdemła	[ʔastemɬan]	'ten'

Semitic languages

The sound is conjectured as a phoneme for Proto-Semitic, usually transcribed as ś; it has evolved into Arabic [ʃ], Hebrew, [s]:

Proto-Semitic	Akkadian	Arabic		Phoenician		Hebrew		Aramaic		Ge'ez
ś	s̠	ش	š		š	שׂ	s	ܫ	s	ሠ	ś

Amongst Semitic languages, the sound still exists in contemporary Soqotri and Mehri. In Ge'ez, it is written with the letter Śawt.

See also

• Voiced alveolar lateral fricative
• Voiceless alveolar lateral affricate
• Index of phonetics articles

External links

• Beth am y llall? John Wells's phonetic blog, 1 July 2009. (How the British phonetician John Wells would teach the sound [ɬ].)
• A chance to share more than just some sounds of languages walesonline.co.uk, 3 May 2012 (Article by Dr Paul Tench including information on transcribing [ɬ] in Chadic languages.)