Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative Totally Explained

Everything about The Voiceless Alveolar Lateral Fricative totally explained

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 fricatives is ɬ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is K. The symbol ɬ is called "belted l" and shouldn't be confused with "l with tilde", [ɫ], which corresponds to 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 often described as a "voiceless l", a description fitting only of the approximant. The sound is relatively rare among the world's languages. It is common among Native American languages, such as Navajo. Welsh is perhaps the best-known example of a language which has this sound (it is indicated in Welsh orthography with a doubled "l").

Features

Features of the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative:

Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it's 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's articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it's 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's 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's articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Ahtna		dzeł	[tsəɬ]	'mountain'
Aleut	Atkan dialect	hla	[ɬɑ]	'boy'
Avar		лъабго	[ˈɬabgo]	'three'
Dahalo		[ʡáɬi]		'fat'
Cantonese	Taishan dialect	*thl*aam	[ɬam˧]	'three'
Chickasaw		lhinko	[ɬinko]	'to be fat'
Chukchi		левыт	[ɬeβət]	'head'
Eyak		qe'ł	[qʰɛʔɬ]	'woman'
Hadza		[ɬɛmeja]		'man'
Haida		tla'únhl	[tɬʰʌʔʊ́nɬ]	'six'
Hmong		hli	[ɬi]	'moon'
Inuktitut		example needed	--	--	See Inuit phonology
Kabardian		плъы	[pɬɛ]	'to look'
Kaska		tsį̄ł	[tsʰĩːɬ]	'axe'
Navajo		łaʼ	[ɬaʔ]	'little'
Sandawe		[ɬáː]		'goat'
Sassarese		moltu	[ˈmɔɬtu]	'dead'
Sesotho		ho hlahloba	[hoɬɑɬɔbɑ]	'to examine'	See Sesotho phonology
St’át’imcets		lhésp	[ɬə́sp]	'rash'
Welsh		llwyd	[ɬʊɪd]	'grey'
Nosu Yi		?	[ɬo˧˩bo˧]	'moon'
Zulu		isihlahla	[isiˈɬaːɬa]	'tree'
Zuni		astemlhan	[ʔastemɬan]	'ten'

Semitic languages

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

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

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

Further Information

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