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

[3] Ball & Rahilly (1999) state that "the airflow for voiced approximants remains laminar (smooth), and does not become turbulent".

In Sino-Tibetan language group, Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) argue that Burmese and Standard Tibetan have voiceless lateral approximants [l̥] and Li Fang-Kuei & William Baxter contrast apophonically the voiceless alveolar lateral approximant from its voiced counterpart in the reconstruction of Old Chinese.

Scholten (2000) harvcoltxt error: no target: CITEREFScholten2000 (help) includes the voiceless velarized alveolar lateral approximant [ɫ̥].

[12] The sound is rare in European languages outside the Caucasus, but it is found notably in Welsh in which it is written ⟨ll⟩.

The specific pronunciation of ⟨ש⟩ evolving to /s/ from [ɬ] is known based on comparative evidence since /ɬ/ is the corresponding Proto-Semitic phoneme and is still attested in Modern South Arabian languages,[14] and early borrowings indicate it from Ancient Hebrew (e.g. balsam < Greek balsamon < Hebrew baśam).