The voiced palatal lateral approximant is a type of
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...
al sound used in some
spoken language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
s. The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
that represents this sound is , a rotated lowercase letter (not to be confused with lowercase
lambda
Lambda (}, ''lám(b)da'') is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiced alveolar lateral approximant . In the system of Greek numerals, lambda has a value of 30. Lambda is derived from the Phoenician Lamed . Lambda gave ri ...
, ), and the equivalent
X-SAMPA symbol is
L.
Many languages that were previously thought to have a palatal lateral approximant actually have a lateral approximant that is, broadly,
alveolo-palatal; that is to say, it is articulated at a place in-between the
alveolar ridge
The alveolar process () or alveolar bone is the thickened ridge of bone that contains the tooth sockets on the jaw bones (in humans, the maxilla and the mandible). The structures are covered by gums as part of the oral cavity.
The synonymous ...
and the
hard palate (excluded), and it may be variously described as alveolo-palatal, lamino-postalveolar,
[, citing ] or postalveolo-prepalatal. None of the 13 languages investigated by , many of them
Romance, has a 'true' palatal. That is likely the case for several other languages listed here. Some languages, like Portuguese and Catalan, have a lateral approximant that varies between alveolar and alveolo-palatal.
There is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the alveolo-palatal lateral approximant. If precision is desired, it may be transcribed or ; they are essentially equivalent because the contact includes both the blade and body (but not the tip) of the tongue. There is also a non-IPA letter ("l", plus the curl found in the symbols for alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives ), used especially in Sinological circles.
The voiced palatal lateral approximant contrasts phonemically with its
voiceless counterpart in the
Xumi language spoken in China.
Features
Features of the voiced palatal lateral approximant:
Occurrence
See also
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Yeísmo
''Yeísmo'' (; literally "Y-ism") is a distinctive feature of certain dialects of the Spanish language, characterized by the loss of the traditional palatal lateral approximant phoneme (written ) and its merger into the phoneme (written ), ...
, a feature of Spanish dialects that have merged this sound with
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Index of phonetics articles
A
* Acoustic phonetics
* Active articulator
* Affricate
* Airstream mechanism
* Alexander John Ellis
* Alexander Melville Bell
* Alfred C. Gimson
* Allophone
* Alveolar approximant ()
* Alveolar click ()
* Alveolar consonant
* Alveolar e ...
Notes
References
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{{IPA navigation
Lateral consonants
Palatal consonants
Alveolo-palatal consonants
Pulmonic consonants
Oral consonants