Dental, alveolar and postalveolar lateral approximants
| Alveolar lateral approximant | |
|---|---|
| l | |
| IPA number | 155 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity (decimal) | l |
| Unicode (hex) | U+006C |
| X-SAMPA | l |
| Kirshenbaum | l |
| Braille |  |
| Sound | |
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| Postalveolar lateral approximant | |
|---|---|
| l̠ |
| Dental lateral approximant | |
|---|---|
| l̪ |
| Dark L | |
|---|---|
| lˠ | |
| lˤ | |
| ɫ | |
| IPA number | 209 |
| Encoding | |
| Entity (decimal) | lˠ |
| Unicode (hex) | U+006C U+02E0 |
| X-SAMPA | 5 or l_G or l_?\ |
| Kirshenbaum | l<vzd> |
| Sound | |
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The alveolar lateral approximant is a type of econsonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral approximants is ⟨l⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is l.
As a sonorant, lateral approximants are nearly always voiced. Voiceless lateral approximants, /l̥/ are common in Sino-Tibetan languages, but uncommon elsewhere. In such cases, voicing typically starts about halfway through the hold of the consonant. No language is known to contrast such a sound with a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ].
In a number of languages, including most varieties of English, the phoneme /l/ becomes velarized in certain contexts, a sound often called "dark l". Some languages, like many North American dialects of English, may not have a "clear" /l/ at all, or use it only before front vowels (especially [i]).
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Wikipedia