The voiced palatal lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʎ̝⟩, though in extIPA ⟨𝼆̬⟩ is preferred. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is L_r.

This sound is not known to occur as a phoneme in any language, but it does occur as an allophone of /ʎ/ in Italian and Jebero.^[1][2]

Features

Features of the voiced palatal 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 palatal, which means it is articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised to the hard palate.
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• 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.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence