Voiced palatal lateral fricative

The voiced palatal lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʎ̝⟩, though in extIPA ⟨𝼆̬⟩ is preferred. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is L_r.

Voiced palatal lateral fricative
ʎ̝
𝼆̬
IPA number	157 429
Encoding
X-SAMPA	L_r

This sound is not known to occur as a phoneme in any language, but it does occur as an allophone of /ʎ/ in Italian, Spanish and Jebero.^[1][2]

Features

Features of the voiced palatal lateral fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is palatal, which means it is articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised to the hard palate.
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a lateral consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream over the sides of the tongue, rather than down the middle.
• Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Italian	Many accents[1]	figlio	[ˈfiʎ̝ːo]	'son'	Approximant [ʎ] in other accents. See Italian phonology
Jebero[2]		[iˈʎ̝apa]		'shotgun'	Dentoalveolo-palatal. Occasional allophone of /ʎ/; only lightly fricated.[2]

See also

• Index of phonetics articles