Voiceless dental and alveolar lateral fricatives

Features of a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative:^[6]

• 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 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.

Lateral fricatives are common among indigenous languages of western North America, such as Nahuatl, Tlingit and Navajo,^[7] and in North Caucasian languages, such as Avar.^[8] It is also found in African languages, such as Zulu, and Asian languages, such as Chukchi, some Yue dialects like Taishanese, the Hlai languages of Hainan, and several Formosan languages and dialects in Taiwan.^[9]

Lateral fricatives are rare in European languages outside the Caucasus, but it is found notably in Welsh, in which it is written ⟨ll⟩.^[10] Several Welsh names beginning with this sound (Llwyd [ɬʊɨd], Llywelyn [ɬəˈwɛlɨn]) have been borrowed into English and then retain the Welsh ⟨ll⟩ spelling but are pronounced with an /l/ (Lloyd, Llewellyn), or they are substituted with ⟨fl⟩ (pronounced /fl/) (Floyd, Fluellen). It was also found in certain dialects of Lithuanian Yiddish.

Modern South Arabian languages are known for their apparent archaic Semitic features, especially in their system of phonology. For example, they preserve the lateral fricatives *ś [ɬ] and *ṣ́/ḏ̣ [ɬʼ] of Proto-Semitic. Except for the Modern South Arabian languages, every other extant Semitic language has merged Proto-Semitic *s2 [ɬ] into one of the two other plain sibilants.^[11]

The phoneme /ɬ/ was reconstructed for the most ancient Hebrew speech of the Ancient Israelites. The orthography of Biblical Hebrew, however, did not directly indicate it. It is, however, attested by later developments: /ɬ/ was written with ⟨ש⟩, but the letter was also used for the sound /ʃ/. Later, /ɬ/ merged with /s/, a sound that had been written only with ⟨ס⟩. As a result, three etymologically distinct modern Hebrew phonemes can be distinguished: /s/ written ⟨ס⟩, /ʃ/ written ⟨ש⟩ (with later niqqud pointing שׁ), and /s/ evolving from /ɬ/ and written ⟨ש⟩ (with later niqqud pointing שׂ). The specific pronunciation of ⟨ש⟩ evolving to /s/ from [ɬ] is known based on comparative evidence since /ɬ/ is the corresponding Proto-Semitic phoneme and is still attested in Modern South Arabian languages,^[12] and early borrowings indicate it from Ancient Hebrew (e.g. balsam < Greek balsamon < Hebrew baśam). The phoneme /ɬ/ began to merge with /s/ in Late Biblical Hebrew, as is indicated by interchange of orthographic ⟨ש⟩ and ⟨ס⟩, possibly under the influence of Aramaic, and became the rule in Mishnaic Hebrew.^[13][14] In all Jewish reading traditions, /ɬ/ and /s/ have merged completely, but in Samaritan Hebrew /ɬ/ has instead merged into /ʃ/.^[13]

A [ɬ] sound is also found in two of the constructed languages invented by J. R. R. Tolkien, Sindarin (inspired by Welsh, which has the sound) and Quenya (even though this language was mostly inspired by Finnish, Ancient Greek, and Latin, none of which have this sound).^[15][16] In Sindarin, it is written as ⟨lh⟩ initially and ⟨ll⟩ medially and finally, and in Quenya, it appears only initially and is written ⟨hl⟩.

Semitic languages

The sound is conjectured as a phoneme for Proto-Semitic language, usually transcribed as ś; it has evolved into Arabic [ʃ], Hebrew [s]:

More information Proto-Semitic, Modern South Arabian Languages ...

Proto-Semitic	Modern South Arabian Languages	Akkadian	Arabic		Phoenician		Tiberian Hebrew		Samaritan Hebrew		Aramaic		Ge'ez
ś [ɬ]	[ɬ]	s̠	ش‎	š		š	שׂ‎	s	ࠔ	š	ܫ	s	ሠ	ś
ṣ́ [ɬʼ] / [tɬʼ]	[ɬʼ]	ṣ	ض‎	ḍ	𐤑‎	ṣ	צ‎	ṣ (modern ts)	ࠑ	ṣ	ע‎	ʿ	ፀ	ṣ́

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Among Semitic languages, the sound (with its emphatic counterpart ṣ́) still exists in contemporary Modern South Arabian languages; Soqotri,^[67] Shehri,^[11] and Mehri.^[103] In Ge'ez, it is written with the letter Śawt.^{[citation needed]}

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

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 version 7.0 in 2014 at U+A7AD.^[108][109]

• Voiced dental and alveolar lateral fricatives
• Voiceless alveolar lateral affricate
• Index of phonetics articles