The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative 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 voiceless
dental,
alveolar, and
postalveolar lateral
fricatives is , and the equivalent
X-SAMPA symbol is
K
. The symbol is called "belted l" and is distinct from "l with tilde", , which transcribes a different sound, the
velarized (or pharynɡealized) alveolar lateral approximant, often called "dark L".
Some scholars also posit the voiceless alveolar lateral approximant distinct from the fricative. The approximant may be represented in the IPA as .
Features
Features of the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative:
Occurrence
The sound is fairly common among
indigenous languages of the Americas
Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large nu ...
, such as
Nahuatl and
Navajo
The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the Southwestern United States.
With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest fe ...
, and in
North Caucasian languages, such as
Avar. It is also found in
African languages, such as
Zulu, and
Asian languages
A wide variety of languages are spoken throughout Asia, comprising different language families and some unrelated isolates. The major language families include Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Caucasian, Dravidian, Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Tu ...
, such as
Chukchi, some
Yue dialects like
Taishanese, the
Hlai languages of Hainan, and several
Formosan languages and dialects in
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...
.
The sound is rare in
European languages outside the
Caucasus
The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historica ...
, but it is found notably in
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...
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.
The phoneme was also found in the most ancient
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
speech of the
Ancient Israelites. The orthography of
Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of t ...
, however, did not directly indicate the phoneme since it and several other phonemes of Ancient Hebrew did not have a grapheme of their own. The phoneme, however, is clearly 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
In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in ...
pointing שׁ), and evolving from and written (with later
niqqud
In Hebrew orthography, niqqud or nikud ( or ) is a system of diacritical signs used to represent vowels or distinguish between alternative pronunciations of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Several such diacritical systems were developed in ...
pointing שׂ). The specific pronunciation of evolving from /s/ from is known based on comparative evidence since is the corresponding
Proto-Semitic phoneme and is still attested in
Modern South Arabian
The Modern South Arabian languages (MSALs), also known as Eastern South Semitic languages, are a group of endangered languages spoken by small populations inhabiting the Arabian Peninsula, in Yemen and Oman, and Socotra Island. Together with the ...
languages,
and early borrowings indicate it from Ancient Hebrew (e.g. ''balsam'' < Greek ''balsamon'' < Hebrew ''baśam''). The phoneme began to merge with in Late Biblical Hebrew, as is indicated by interchange of orthographic and , possibly under the influence of
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...
, and became the rule in
Mishnaic Hebrew.
In all Jewish reading traditions, and have merged completely, but in
Samaritan Hebrew has instead merged into .
The sound is also found in two of the
constructed languages invented by
J. R. R. Tolkien,
Sindarin (inspired by Welsh) and
Quenya (inspired by Finnish, Ancient Greek, and Latin). 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
Alveolar
Alveolar approximant
Semitic languages
The sound is conjectured as a phoneme for
Proto-Semitic language
Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical reconstructed proto-language ancestral to the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto-Semitic '' Urheimat''; scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant ( ...
, usually transcribed as ; it has evolved into Arabic ,
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
:
Among
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...
, the sound still exists in contemporary
Soqotri and
Mehri. In Ge'ez, it is written with the letter
Śawt.
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
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
version 7.0 in 2014 at U+A7AD.
See also
*
Voiced dental and alveolar lateral fricatives
The voiced alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiced dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is (sometimes ...
*
Voiceless alveolar lateral affricate
*
Index of phonetics articles
Notes
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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
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{{IPA navigation
Alveolar consonants
Fricative consonants
Lateral consonants
Pulmonic consonants
Voiceless oral consonants