The voiceless retroflex lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The IPA has no symbol for this sound. However, the "belt" of the voiceless lateral fricative is combined with the tail of the retroflex consonants to create the extIPA letter ⟨ꞎ⟩:

In 2008, the Unicode Technical Committee accepted the letter as U+A78E ꞎ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH RETROFLEX HOOK AND BELT, included in Unicode 6.0.

Some scholars also posit the voiceless retroflex lateral approximant distinct from the fricative. The approximant may be represented in the IPA as ⟨ɭ̊⟩.

Features

Features of the voiceless retroflex 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 retroflex, which prototypically means it is articulated subapical (with the tip of the tongue curled up), but more generally, it means that it is postalveolar without being palatalized. That is, besides the prototypical subapical articulation, the tongue contact can be apical (pointed) or laminal (flat).
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• 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 diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence