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IPA – number	148
IPA – text	ɬ
IPA – image
Entity	ɬ
X-SAMPA	K
Kirshenbaum	s
Sound sample (help·info)

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 fricatives is ɬ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is K. The symbol ɬ is called "belted l" and should not be confused with "l with tilde", [ɫ], which corresponds to a different sound, the velarized alveolar lateral approximant. It should also be distinguished from a voiceless alveolar lateral approximant, although the fricative is sometimes incorrectly often described as a "voiceless l", a description fitting only of the approximant. The sound is relatively rare among the world's languages. It is most commonly found in native North American languages. Welsh is one European language well-known for having this sound, which it indicates with the digraph ll (LL).

Features of the voiceless 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 against the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
• Its phonation type 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.
• It is a lateral consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the sides of the tongue, rather than the middle of the tongue.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

The sound is conjectured as a phoneme for Proto-Semitic, usually transcribed as ś; it has evolved into Arabic [ʃ], Hebrew, [s]:

Proto-Semitic	Akkadian	Arabic		Phoenician		Hebrew		Aramaic		Ge'ez
ś	s̠	ش	š		š	שׂ	s	שׂ	s	ሰ	ś

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

• Voiced alveolar lateral fricative
• List of phonetics topics