A 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 . The symbol is called "belted l" and is distinct from "l with tilde", , which transcribes a different soundthe velarized (or pharynɡealized) alveolar lateral approximant, often called "dark L".
A voiceless alveolar lateral approximant is transcribed in IPA as . In Sino-Tibetan languages, argue that Burmese and Standard Tibetan have voiceless lateral approximants and Li Fang-Kuei & William Baxter contrast apophonically the voiceless alveolar lateral approximant from its voiced counterpart in the reconstruction of Old Chinese. A voiceless dental or alveolar lateral approximant is found as an allophone of its voiced counterpart in British English and Philadelphia English after voiceless coronal and labial stops, and it is velarized before back vowels; the allophone of after is most commonly as a voiceless velar lateral approximant. See English phonology.
Features Features of a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative:
Occurrence Lateral fricatives are common among indigenous languages of western North America, such as Nahuatl, Tlingit and Navajo, and in North Caucasian languages, such as Avar. It is also found in African languages, such as Zulu, and Asian languages, such as Chukchi, some Yue dialects like Taishanese, the Hlai languages of Hainan, and several Formosan languages and dialects in Taiwan.
Lateral fricatives are rare in European languages outside the Caucasus, but it is found notably in Welsh, in which it is written . Several Welsh names beginning with this sound (Llwyd , Llywelyn ) have been borrowed into English and then retain the Welsh spelling but are pronounced with an (Lloyd, Llewellyn), or they are substituted with (pronounced ) (Floyd, Fluellen). It was also found in certain dialects of Lithuanian Yiddish.
Modern South Arabian languages are known for their apparent archaic Semitic features, especially in their system of phonology. For example, they preserve the lateral fricatives and / of Proto-Semitic. Except for the Modern South Arabian languages, every other extant Semitic language has merged Proto-Semitic *s2 into one of the two other plain sibilants.
The phoneme was reconstructed for the most ancient Hebrew speech of the Ancient Israelites. The orthography of Biblical Hebrew, however, did not directly indicate it. It is, however, attested by later developments: was written with , but the letter was also used for the sound . Later, merged with , a sound that had been written only with . As a result, three etymologically distinct modern Hebrew phonemes can be distinguished: written , written (with later niqqud pointing שׁ), and evolving from and written (with later niqqud pointing שׂ). The specific pronunciation of evolving to from is known based on comparative evidence since is the corresponding Proto-Semitic phoneme and is still attested in Modern South Arabian languages, and early borrowings indicate it from Ancient Hebrew (e.g. < Greek < Hebrew ). The phoneme began to merge with in Late Biblical Hebrew, as is indicated by interchange of orthographic and , possibly under the influence of Aramaic, and became the rule in Mishnaic Hebrew. In all Jewish reading traditions, and have merged completely, but in Samaritan Hebrew has instead merged into .
A sound is also found in two of the constructed languages invented by J. R. R. Tolkien, Sindarin (inspired by Welsh, which has the sound) and Quenya (even though this language was mostly inspired by Finnish, Ancient Greek, and Latin, none of which have this sound). In Sindarin, it is written as initially and medially and finally, and in Quenya, it appears only initially and is written .
Dental or denti-alveolar Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Amis Kangko dialect 'bowl' Allophonic variation of word-final and sometimes word-initial . Mapudungun 'phlegm that is spit' Interdental; possible utterance-final allophone of . Norwegian Trondheim dialect 'sold' Laminal denti-alveolar; allophone of . Also described as an approximant. See Norwegian phonology Sahaptin 'moccasins' Contrasts approximant .
Alveolar Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Adyghe / / 'red' Ahtna 'mountain' Avar / / 'three' Basay 'water' Berber Ait Seghrouchen 'not yet' Allophone of . Brahui / teļ 'scorpion' Contrasts with . Bunun Isbukun dialect 'mountain' Voiceless allophone of among some speakers. Burabatli'early forenoon (7-9am)' Contrasts with and . Central Alaskan Yup'ik 'arm' Cherokee Oklahoma Cherokee , , 'not', 'dog' In free variation with affricate among some speakers. Also an alternative pronunciation of voiceless lateral approximant , a realization of cluster . Chickasaw 'it is dry' Chinese TaishaneseTaishanese Dictionary & Resources 三 'three' Corresponds to in Standard Cantonese Pinghua Pu-Xian Min 'sand' Chipewyan 'fish' Chukchi 'shoes' Dahalo 'stew' Contrasts palatal and labialized . Damin l*i 'fish' Ingressive with egressive glottalic release Deg Xinag 'she is teaching them' Dogrib 'smoke' Contrasts voiced . Eyak 'woman' Contrasts approximant . Fali 'shoulder' Forest Nenets 'rain' Contrasts palatalized . Greenlandic 'house' Realization of underlying geminate . See Greenlandic phonology Hadza 'man' Haida 'six' Halkomelem 'wet' Attested in at least the Musqueam dialect.Hla'alua 'vegetable'Hlai'fish' Contrasts voiced approximant . Hmong 'moon' Inuktitut 'grizzly bear' See Inuit phonology Kabardian / / 'blood' Contrasts voiced and glottalic . Kaska tsį̄ł 'axe'KhamGamale Kham'leaf' Khroskyabs 'kill' (causative) Lillooet 'rash' Lushootseed 'sun' Mapudungun 'a different song' Possible utterance-final allophone of .Mehri'milk'Contrasts with , and . Moloko 'cow' Mongolian 'Wednesday' Only in loanwords from Tibetan; here from ལྷག་པ (lhag-pa) Muscogee 'grape' Nahuatl 'city' Allophone of Navajo 'some' See Navajo phonology Nisga'a 'sun' Norwegian Trøndersk 'weak', 'small' Contrasts alveolar approximant , apical postalveolar approximant , and laminal postalveolar approximant .Nuosu 'to fry' Contrasts approximant . Nuxalk 'thick' Contrasts with // and //. Saanich 'splash' Sandawe 'goat' Sassarese 'dead' Sawi 'three' Contrasts approximant . Developed from earlier *tr- consonant cluster.Shehri'ten'Contrasts with , and . Shuswap 'fire is out' Sotho 'to examine' See Sotho phonologySoqotri 'old'Contrasts with , and . Swedish Jämtlandic 'cold' Also occurs in dialects in Dalarna and Härjedalen. See Swedish phonologyVästerbotten dialect[beɬː]'bridle' Taos 'wife' See Taos phonology Tera 'side' Thao 'star' Tlingit 'Tlingit'Trumai Toda 'to learn' Contrasts .UkrainianPoltava subdialect'milk'Occurs only in Poltava subdialect of Central Dniprovian dialect. Tsez 'water' Vietnamese Gin dialect 'small' Welsh 'kettle' See Welsh phonology Xhosa 'we stay'Yurok'earring' Zulu 'twig' Contrasts voiced . Zuni 'ten'
Alveolar approximant
Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Aleut Western Aleut 'boy' Contrasts with voiced /l/. Merged in Eastern Aleut. Burmese 'beautiful' Contrasts with voiced /l/. Danish Standard 'square' Before , aspiration of is realized as devoicing of . See Danish phonology English Cardiff plus 'plus' See English phonology Norfolk Estonian 'juice' Word-final allophone of after . See Estonian phonology Faroese 'to help' Allophone of before fortis plosives. French 'people' Devoiced allophone of , occurs after voiceless obstruents. Often gains voicing midway.Iaai'black'Contrasts with voiced /l/. Icelandic 'barn' Realisation of underlying .According to most analyses. The phonemic analyses of modern Icelandic is a matter of great debate, see Icelandic phonology. Allophone of before fortis plosives and utterance finally. In free variation with the globaly more common fricative.Kildin Sámiтоӆсэ[ˈtol̥sɛ]'to keep the flame alive'Contrasts with /l/, /l̥ʲ/, /lʲ/, and /ʎ/. Northern Sámi Eastern Inland 'salary' Allophone of underlying cluster .Pipil Contrasted voiced in some now-extinct dialects. Scottish Gaelic 'blow, knock' Allophone of before a pre-aspirated plosive. Southern Nambikwara 'cane toad' Allophonic variation of .Tibetan 'Lhasa'UkrainianStandard'sense'Word-final allophone of after voiceless consonants. See Ukrainian phonologyXumiLower[ʁul̥o˦]'head'Upper[bə˦l̥ä̝˦]'to open a lock'Described as an approximant. Contrasts with the voiced .
Velarized dental or alveolar approximant
Language Word IPA Meaning Notes English Some Philadelphia speakers plus 'plus' See English phonologyGeorgianAllophonicIrish GaelicPhonemicKetAllophonicMokshaкалхт'fish' Phonemic, but may be insteadRussianAllophonic Scottish Gaelic 'hair' Allophone of before a pre-aspirated plosive or in word-final position.SámiTer Phonemic Turkish 'way' Devoiced allophone of velarized dental , frequent finally and before voiceless consonants. See Turkish phonology
Voiceless lateral–median fricative
A voiceless alveolar lateral–median fricative (also known as a "lisp" fricative) is a consonantal sound pronounced with simultaneous lateral and central airflow.
Features However, it does not have the grooved tongue and directed airflow, or the high frequencies, of a sibilant.
Occurrence Language Word IPA Meaning Notes ArabicHeselwood (2013) Phonetic transcription in theory and practice, pp. 122–123 Al-Rubūah dialect 'anguish'Younger speakers distinguish between voiceless for emotional pain and voiced for physical pain. Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic [dialect missing] 'thirsty' Classical and Modern Standard Arabic EnglishLateral lispsend'send'Occurs as a replacement for
Capital letter
Since the IPA letter "ɬ" has been adopted into the standard orthographies for many native North American languages, a capital letter L with belt "Ɬ" was requested by academics and added to the Unicode Standard version 7.0 in 2014 at U+A7AD.Joshua M Jensen, Karl Pentzlin, 2012-02-08, Proposal to encode a Latin Capital Letter L with Belt This is distinct from the small capital used for a voiceless velar lateral fricative.
See also Voiced dental and alveolar lateral fricatives Voiceless alveolar lateral affricate Index of phonetics articles
Notes
References
Official database:
Further reading Beth am y llall? John Wells's phonetic blog, 1 July 2009. (How the British phonetician John Wells would teach the sound .) 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 in Chadic languages.)
External links