IPA number 148 Unicode (hex) U+026C Kirshenbaum s | Entity (decimal) ɬ X-SAMPA K | |
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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 symbol [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.
Contents
Several Welsh names beginning with this sound (e.g. Llwyd /ɬʊɨd/, Llywelyn /ɬəˈwɛlɨn/) have been borrowed into English, where they either retain the Welsh ⟨ll⟩ spelling but are pronounced with an /l/ (Lloyd, Llewellyn), or are substituted with ⟨fl⟩ (pronounced /fl/) (Floyd, Fluellen).
Features
Features of the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative:
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 indigenous languages of the Americas such as Navajo, and North Caucasian languages, such as Avar. It is also found in African languages like Zulu, Asian languages like Chukchi and some Yue dialects like Taishanese, and several Formosan languages and a number of dialects in Taiwan.
Semitic languages
The sound is conjectured as a phoneme for Proto-Semitic language, usually transcribed as ś; it has evolved into Arabic [ʃ], Hebrew [s]:
Amongst Semitic languages, the sound still exists in contemporary Soqotri and Mehri. In Ge'ez, it is written with the letter Śawt.