Voiceless alveolar lateral flap

A voiceless alveolar lateral flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɺ̥⟩, a fusion of a rotated lowercase letter ⟨r⟩ with a letter ⟨l⟩ and a voiceless diacritic.

Voiceless alveolar lateral flap
ɺ̥
IPA number	181
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɺ
Unicode (hex)	U+027A
X-SAMPA	l\
Braille

Features

Features of a voiceless alveolar lateral flap:

• Its manner of articulation is tap or flap, which means it is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (usually the tongue) is thrown against another.
• Its place of articulation is alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
• It is an oral consonant, which means that air is not allowed to escape through the nose.
• 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 only with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Family	Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Arawakan	Karu[1]	Hohodene	[ɺ̥je.ˈtɐ̃.hə͂]		'that'	In alternation with an alveolar tap.[1] Contrasts /ɺ̥, ɺ/.
Arawakan	Yavitero[2]		[example needed]			Contrasts /ɾ, r, ɺ̥, ɺ/.