Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative

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 this sound is ɬ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is K. The symbol ɬ is called "belted l" and should not be confused with "l with tilde", [ɫ], which corresponds to a different sound, the velarized alveolar lateral approximant.

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 the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge.
• Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a lateral consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the sides of the tongue, rather than the middle of the tongue.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

In English

English does not possess this sound, but English speakers can approximate it by pronouncing the sounds [h] and [l] simultaneously.

In other languages

Welsh

In Welsh spelling, the letters ll correspond to this sound.

Icelandic

In Icelandic spelling the initial letters hl and l in lp, lt, lk correspond to this sound.

Xhosa and Zulu

In Xhosa and Zulu spelling, the letters hl correspond to this sound.

See also

• List of phonetics topics