Voiced dental and alveolar lateral flaps

The voiced alveolar lateral flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages.

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɺ⟩, a fusion of a rotated lowercase letter ⟨r⟩ with a letter ⟨l⟩.

Approved in 1928, the symbol represented a sound intermediate between [d] and [l][1][2] or between [r] and [l][3][4] until 1979 when its value was redefined as an alveolar lateral flap.

[5] Some languages that are described as having a lateral flap actually have a flap that is indeterminate with respect to centrality, and may surface as either central or lateral, either in free variation or allophonically depending on surrounding vowels and consonants.

Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible.