A voiced alveolar lateral flap is a type of consonantal sound, found in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a fusion of a rotated lowercase letter with a letter . Approved in 1928, the symbol represented a sound intermediate between and or between and until 1979, when its value was redefined as an alveolar lateral flap.
Some languages that are described as having a lateral flap actually have a flap that is indeterminate with respect to centrality, and may surface as either central or lateral, either in free variation or allophonically depending on surrounding vowels and consonants.
Additionally, some languages have a voiced postalveolar lateral flap, which can be transcribed in the IPA with the retracted diacritic, such as .
Features Features of a voiced alveolar lateral flap:
Occurrence
Alveolar Language Word IPA Meaning NotesBaniwa 'ember'Varies a median flap, but is lateral in careful pronunciation. Chaga (Vunjo dialect) 'to dress oneself' Contrasts with Iwaidjaayanjildin 'sweetheart' Contrasts and possibly . Japanese roku 'six'Allophonically . See Japanese phonology kokoro 'heart'Kasua 'heavy' Never used at the beginning nor the end of a word.Wayuu 'pig' Contrasts with .YalëAannested, Aidan. (2020). "Towards a grammar of the Yale language: taking another look at archived field data". SIL International. 'Yalë' In free variation with ; written as or .
Postalveolar Language Word IPA Meaning NotesAmis 'fog'Has a vowel-like release when word final. Norwegian Trøndersk 'glass' Also described as central . See Norwegian phonology
See also Index of phonetics articles Perception of English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese speakers
Notes
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