Voiced palatal lateral approximant

Uncommon card · No. 155179

A voiced palatal lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʎ⟩, a rotated lowercase letter ⟨y⟩. Many languages that were previously thought to have a palatal lateral approximant actually have a lateral approximant that is, broadly, alveolo-palatal: the sound is articulated at a place in-between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate (excluded), and it may be variously described as alveolo-palatal, lamino-postalveolar, or postalveolo-prepalatal. None of the 13 languages investigated by Recasens (2013), many of them Romance, has a 'true' palatal. That is likely the case for several other languages listed here. Some languages, like Portuguese and Catalan, have a lateral approximant that varies between alveolar and alveolo-palatal. What is transcribed ⟨ʎ⟩ is often actually a voiced alveolo-palatal lateral approximant. There is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic...

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