The voiced retroflex lateral flap is a type of

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...

al sound, used in some spoken

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

s. The expected symbol in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

is ().Kirk Miller & Michael Ashby
L2/20-252R
Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic The sound may also be transcribed as a short , or with the old dot diacritic, .

Features

Features of the voiced retroflex lateral flap:

Occurrence

A retroflex lateral flap has been reported from various languages of

Sulawesi Sulawesi (), also known as Celebes (), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the world's eleventh-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sulu ...

such as the

Sangiric languages The Sangiric languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages spoken in North Sulawesi, Indonesia and several small islands to the north which belong to the Philippines. They are classified as a branch of the Philippine subgroup. Classifi ...

, Buol and Totoli, as well as Nambikwara in Brazil (plain and laryngealized), Gaagudju in Australia,

Purépecha The Purépecha (endonym pua, P'urhepecha ) are a group of indigenous people centered in the northwestern region of Michoacán, Mexico, mainly in the area of the cities of Cherán and Pátzcuaro. They are also known by the pejorative " Tarascan ...

and Western Rarámuri in Mexico, Moro in Sudan, O'odham and Mohawk in the United States,

Chaga The Chaga or Chagga (Swahili language: WaChaga) are Bantu languages, Bantu-speaking Indigenous peoples of Africa, indigenous Africans and the third-largest ethnic group in Tanzania. They traditionally live on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro ...

in Tanzania, and Kanuri in Nigeria. Various Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages of

Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographical region in Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geopolitically, it includes the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, In ...

are reported to have a retroflex lateral flap, either phonemically or phonetically, including

Gujarati Gujarati may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India * Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat * Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them * Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub- ...

, Konkani, Marathi,

Odia Odia, also spelled Oriya or Odiya, may refer to: * Odia people in Odisha, India * Odia language, an Indian language, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family * Odia alphabet, a writing system used for the Odia languag ...

, and Rajasthani.* Masica describes the sound as widespread in the Indic languages of India:

Dedicated letter

A letter is implicit in the IPA: the letter for the alveolar lateral flap with the tail of the retroflex consonants, This was added to

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

in 2020, and as of 2022 only a few fonts support it, such as the free

SIL International SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) is an evangelical Christian non-profit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to e ...

fonts Gentium Plus, Charis, and Doulos.

References

External links

* {{LetterR Lateral consonants Retroflex consonants Tap and flap consonants Pulmonic consonants Oral consonants