Voiceless dental and alveolar lateral fricatives

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

The symbol is called "belted l" and is distinct from "l with tilde",, which transcribes a different sound – the velarized (or pharynɡealized) alveolar lateral approximant, often called "dark L".

Some scholars also posit the voiceless alveolar lateral approximant distinct from the fricative. More recent research distinguishes between "turbulent" and "laminar" airflow in the vocal tract. Ball & Rahilly (1999) state that "the airflow for voiced approximants remains laminar (smooth), and does not become turbulent". The approximant may be represented in the IPA as ⟨l̥⟩.

In Sino-Tibetan language group, argue that Burmese and Standard Tibetan have voiceless lateral approximants and Li Fang-Kuei & William Baxter contrast apophonicaly the voiceless alveolar lateral approximant from its voiced counterpart in the reconstruction of Old Chinese. includes the voiceless velarized alveolar lateral approximant.

However, the voiceless dental & alveolar lateral approximant is constantly found as an allophone of its voiced counterpart in British English and Philadelphia English after voiceless coronal and labial stops, who is velarized before back vowels, the allophone of after voiceless dorsal and laryngeal stops is most realized as a voiceless velar lateral approximant. See English phonology.

Features
Features of the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative:

Occurrence
The sound is fairly common among indigenous languages of the Americas, such as Nahuatl and Navajo, and in North Caucasian languages, such as Avar. 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.

The sound is rare in European languages outside the Caucasus, but it is found notably in Welsh in which it is written $\langlell\rangle$. Several Welsh names beginning with this sound (Llwyd, Llywelyn ) have been borrowed into English and then retain the Welsh $⟨ll⟩$ spelling but are pronounced with an (Lloyd, Llewellyn), or they are substituted with $⟨fl⟩$ (pronounced ) (Floyd, Fluellen). It was also found in certain dialects of Lithuanian Yiddish.

The phoneme was also found in the most ancient Hebrew speech of the Ancient Israelites. The orthography of Biblical Hebrew, however, did not directly indicate the phoneme since it and several other phonemes of Ancient Hebrew did not have a grapheme of their own. The phoneme, however, is clearly attested by later developments: was written with $⟨ש⟩$, but the letter was also used for the sound. Later, merged with, a sound that had been written only with $⟨ס⟩$. As a result, three etymologically distinct modern Hebrew phonemes can be distinguished: written $⟨ס⟩$,  written $⟨ש⟩$ (with later niqqud pointing שׁ), and  evolving from  and written $⟨ש⟩$ (with later niqqud pointing שׂ). The specific pronunciation of $⟨ש⟩$ evolving to from  is known based on comparative evidence since  is the corresponding Proto-Semitic phoneme and is still attested in Modern South Arabian languages, and early borrowings indicate it from Ancient Hebrew (e.g. balsam < Greek balsamon < Hebrew baśam). The phoneme began to merge with  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. In all Jewish reading traditions, and  have merged completely, but in Samaritan Hebrew  has instead merged into.

The sound is also found in two of the constructed languages invented by J. R. R. Tolkien, Sindarin (inspired by Welsh) and Quenya (inspired by Finnish, Ancient Greek, and Latin). In Sindarin, it is written as $\langlelh\rangle$ initially and $\langlell\rangle$ medially and finally, and in Quenya, it appears only initially and is written $\langlehl\rangle$.

Semitic languages
The sound is conjectured as a phoneme for Proto-Semitic language, usually transcribed as ; it has evolved into Arabic, Hebrew :

Among Semitic languages, the sound still exists in contemporary Soqotri and Mehri. In Ge'ez, it is written with the letter Śawt.

Voiceless lateral-median fricative
The voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative (also known as a "lisp" fricative) is a consonantal sound. Consonants is pronounced with simultaneous lateral and central airflow.

Features
However, it does not have the grooved tongue and directed airflow, or the high frequencies, of a sibilant.

Capital letter
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.