Voiced dental and alveolar lateral fricatives

Voiced alveolar lateral fricative
ɮ
IPA number149
Audio sample
Encoding
Entity (decimal)ɮ
Unicode (hex)U+026E
X-SAMPAK\
Braille⠇ (braille pattern dots-123) ⠐ (braille pattern dots-5) ⠮ (braille pattern dots-2346)
Voiced dental lateral fricative
ɮ̪
IPA number149 408
Voiced postalveolar lateral fricative
ɮ̠
IPA number149 414
Audio sample

A voiced alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages.

Notation

Former style of the IPA letter for a voiced alveolar lateral fricative

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiced dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is ⟨ɮ⟩, sometimes referred to as lezh.

In 1938, a symbol shaped similarly to heng ⟨ꜧ⟩ was approved as the official IPA symbol for the voiced alveolar lateral fricative, replacing ⟨ɮ⟩. It was suggested at the same time, however, that a compromise shaped like something between the two may also be used at the author's discretion. It was this compromise version, ⟨⟩, that was included in the 1949 Principles of the International Phonetic Association and the subsequent IPA charts, until it was replaced again by ⟨ɮ⟩ at the 1989 Kiel Convention. Despite the Association's prescription, ⟨ɮ⟩ is nonetheless seen in literature from the 1960s to the 1980s.

There are several Unicode characters based on lezh (ɮ):

Features

Features of a voiced alveolar lateral fricative:

Occurrence

Dental or denti-alveolar

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Amis Kangko ada [ʔaɮ̟aʔ] 'enemy' May be realized as denti-alveolar [ɮ̟] or interdental [ɮ̪͆]. Corresponds to [ð̪] in the Fengpin dialect.

Alveolar

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Adyghe къалэ [qaːɮa]ⓘ 'town' Can also be pronounced as [l]
Bura dlambà [ɮamba] 'cloud' Contrasts with [ɬ] and [𝼆].
English South African ibandla [iˈbaːnɮa] 'meeting of a Nguni chief or community' Only found in Zulu loan words in South African English.
Kabalan dedan [ɮəˈan] 'sky'
Kabardian блы [bɮə]ⓘ 'seven' Can also be pronounced as [l]
Ket олын [ɔɮɨn] 'nose' Can also be pronounced as [l]
Moloko zlan [ɮàŋ] 'start, begin' Contrasts with [ɬ], [l] and [ʒ]
Mongolian чулуу [tʃʊɮʊː] 'stone' Devoiced to [ɬ] at the end of a word or when surrounded by voiceless consonants
Pinuyumayan lrevek [ɮəˈvək] 'tooth' Puyuma dialect doesn't have the sound.
Sassarese caldhu [ˈkaɮdu]ⓘ 'hot'
Tera dlepti [ɮè̞pti] 'planting' Contrasts with both [ɬ] and [l]
Truku lukus ['ɮukus] 'clothes'
Zulu ukudla [úɠùːɮá] 'to eat' Contrasts with both [ɬ] and [l]; realized as [dɮ] after nasals

Voiced lateral–median fricative

Voiced alveolar lateral–median fricative
ʫ
ð̠ˡ
Audio sample
Voiced dental lateral–median fricative
ʫ̪
ðˡ

The voiced alveolar lateral–median fricative (also known as a "lisp" fricative) is a consonantal sound pronounced with simultaneous lateral and central airflow.

Features

Occurrence

LanguageWordIPAMeaningNotes
Arabic ضَبْعْ [ðˡˤabʕ] 'hyena' Classical Arabic [ɮˁ] and Modern Standard Arabic [dˤ]
Mehri ذوفر [ðˡˤoːfar] 'plait'

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Wells, John (3 November 2006). "The symbol ɮ". John Wells’s phonetic blog. Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London. Archived from the original on 13 June 2018. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  2. ↑ Newman, Paul (1964). "A word list of Tera". Journal of West African Languages. 1 (2): 33–50.
  3. ↑ Catford, J. C.; Ladefoged, Peter (1968). Working Papers in Phonetics 11: Practical Phonetic Exercises. University of California, Los Angeles. Archived from the original on 2 February 2018. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  4. ↑ Brosnahan, L. F.; Malmberg, Bertil (1970). Introduction to Phonetics. Cambridge University Press. p. 105. ISBN 0-521-21100-X.
  5. ↑ Ladefoged, Peter (1971). Preliminaries to Linguistic Phonetics. University of Chicago Press. p. 54. ISBN 0-226-46787-2.
  6. ↑ MacKay, Ian (1987). Phonetics: The Science of Speech Production (2nd ed.). Little, Brown and Company. p. 106. ISBN 0-316-54238-5.
  7. 1 2 3 Miller, Kirk; Ball, Martin (11 July 2020). "L2/20-116R: Expansion of the extIPA and VoQS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 October 2020. Retrieved 13 October 2022.
  8. ↑ Anderson, Deborah (7 December 2020). "L2/21-021: Reference doc numbers for L2/20-266R "Consolidated code chart of proposed phonetic characters" and IPA etc. code point and name changes" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 8 January 2021. Retrieved 13 October 2022.
  9. ↑ Maddieson, Ian; Wright, Richard (October 1995). "The Vowels and Consonants of Amis — A Preliminary Phonetic Report" (PDF). Fieldwork Studies of Targeted Languages III. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics Volume 91. pp. 45–65. Archived (PDF) from the original on 31 March 2023. Retrieved 11 December 2025.
  10. 1 2 Grønnum (2005), pp. 154–155.
  11. ↑ Friesen (2017), p. 49.
  12. ↑ Tench (2007), p. 228.
  13. ↑ Poulos & Msimang (1998), p. 548.
  14. ↑ Heselwood, Barry (2013). "Phonetic Notation". Phonetic Transcription in Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press. pp. 122–123. ISBN 978-0-7486-9101-2.
  15. 1 2 Watson, Janet (2011). "Lateral fricatives and lateral emphatics in southern Saudi Arabia and Mehri". Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies. Vol. 41. Oxford: Archaeopress. p. 425-432. ISBN 978-1-905739-40-0. Archived from the original on 10 July 2024. Retrieved 28 April 2024.
  16. ↑ Watson, Janet (2013). "Lateral reflexes of Proto-Semitic D and Dh in Al-Rubūʽah dialect, south-west Saudi Arabic: Electropalatographic and acoustic evidence". Nicht Nur mit Engelszungen: Beiträge zur Semitischen Dialektologie: Festschrift für Werner Arnold. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 978-447-06926-7. Archived from the original on 28 April 2024. Retrieved 28 April 2024.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ignored ISBN errors (link)

References