# Voiced dental and alveolar lateral fricatives

The voiced alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiced dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is ⟨ɮ⟩ (sometimes referred to as lezh), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is K\.

## Features

Features of the voiced alveolar 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 alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
* 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.
* Its 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
### Dental or denti-alveolar

| Language | Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes |
| Amis | Kangko accent | | | | Interdental [ɮ̟] |

### Alveolar

| Language | Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes |
| Adyghe | Adyghe | къалэ | | 'town' | Can also be pronounced as [l] |
| Arabic | Classical | الأَرضِ | | 'the earth' | |
| Bura | Bura | dlambà | [ɮamba] | 'cloud' | Contrasts with [ɬ] and [𝼆]. |
| English | South African | ibandla | [iˈbaːnɮa] | 'meeting of a Nguni chief or community' | Only found in Zulu loan words in South African English. |
| Kabardian | Kabardian | блы | | 'seven' | Can also be pronounced as [l] |
| Ket | Ket | олын | [ɔɮɨn] | 'nose' | Can also be pronounced as [l] |
| Moloko | Moloko | zlan | [ɮàŋ] | 'start, begin' | Contrasts with [ɬ], [l] and [ʒ] |
| Mongolian | Mongolian | монгол | | 'Mongol' | Devoiced to [ɬ] at the end of a word or when surrounded by voiceless consonants |
| Sassarese | Sassarese | caldhu | | 'hot' | |
| Tera | Tera | dlepti | [ɮè̞pti] | 'planting' | Contrasts with both [ɬ] and [l] |
| Zulu | Zulu | ukudla | [úɠù:ɮá] | 'to eat' | Contrasts with both [ɬ] and [l]; realized as [dɮ] after nasals |
In addition, a pharyngealized voiced alveolar lateral fricative is reconstructed to be the ancient Classical Arabic pronunciation of Ḍād; the letter is now pronounced in Modern Standard Arabic as a pharyngealized voiced coronal stop, as alveolar [dˤ] or denti-alveolar [d̪ˤ].

## Voiced lateral-median fricative

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

### Features

* 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. However, it does not have the grooved tongue and directed airflow, or the high frequencies, of a sibilant.
* Its place of articulation is alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
* 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 central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
* 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.
* Its 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

| Language | Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes |
| Arabic | Rijal Almaʽa | ضبع | [ðˡˤabʕ] | 'hyena' | Classical Arabic *ɮˁ and Modern Standard Arabic [dˤ] |
| Mehri | Mehri | ذوفر | [ðˡˤoːfar] | 'plait' | |

## Related characters

There are several Unicode characters based on lezh (ɮ):
* U+1079E 𐞞 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL LEZH is a superscript IPA letter
* U+1079F 𐞟 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL LEZH WITH RETROFLEX HOOK is a superscript IPA letter
* U+1DF05 𝼅 LATIN SMALL LETTER LEZH WITH RETROFLEX HOOK is an extension to IPA for disordered speech (extIPA)

## Notation

In 1938, a symbol shaped similarly to heng ⟨ꜧ⟩ was approved as the official IPA symbol for the voiced alveolar lateral fricative, replacing ⟨ɮ⟩. It was suggested at the same time, however, that a compromise shaped like something between the two may also be used at the author's discretion. It was this compromise version that was included in the 1949 Principles of the International Phonetic Association and the subsequent IPA charts, until it was replaced again by ⟨ɮ⟩ at the 1989 Kiel Convention. Despite the Association's prescription, ⟨ɮ⟩ is nonetheless seen in literature from the 1960s to the 1980s.