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 [ɬ], and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is K.

The symbol [ɬ] is called "belted l" and is distinct from "l with tilde", [ɫ], 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, Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) argue that Burmese and Standard Tibetan have voiceless lateral approximants [l̥] and Li Fang-Kuei & William Baxter contrast apophonicaly the voiceless alveolar lateral approximant from its voiced counterpart in the reconstruction of Old Chinese. Scholten (2000) harvcoltxt error: no target: CITEREFScholten2000 (help) includes the voiceless velarized alveolar lateral approximant [ɫ̥].

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