The voiced alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiced dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is K\.

Features

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Features of the voiced alveolar 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 alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a lateral consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the sides of the tongue, rather than the middle of the tongue.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

In other languages

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occurs in several southern African languages such as Ndebele, Xhosa and Zulu, where it is contrastive to more common laterals like ^*. Han Athabaskan and Adyghe both contrast voiced and voiceless lateral fricatives, but lack the approximant.

See also

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• List of phonetics topics

Alveolar consonants | Fricative consonants

Stimmhafter lateraler alveolarer Frikativ | Consonne fricative latérale alvéolaire voisée | Tonande alveolar lateral frikativa