Voiced palatal lateral approximant

A voiced palatal lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʎ⟩, a rotated lowercase letter ⟨y⟩, not to be confused with the Greek lowercase letter lambda ⟨λ⟩.

Many languages that were previously thought to have a palatal lateral approximant actually have a lateral approximant that is, broadly, alveolo-palatal: the sound is articulated at a place in-between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate (excluded), and it may be variously described as alveolo-palatal, lamino-postalveolar, or postalveolo-prepalatal. None of the 13 languages investigated by Recasens (2013), many of them Romance, has a 'true' palatal. That is likely the case for several other languages listed here. Some languages, like Portuguese and Catalan, have a lateral approximant that varies between alveolar and alveolo-palatal.

What is transcribed ⟨ʎ⟩ is often actually a voiced alveolo-palatal lateral approximant. There is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound, which is one reason that ⟨ʎ⟩ is used. If more precision is desired, it may be transcribed ⟨l̠ʲ⟩. There is a non-IPA letter, U+0234 ȴ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH CURL; ⟨ȴ⟩ (⟨l⟩, plus the curl found in the symbols for alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives ⟨ɕ, ʑ⟩), which is used especially in Sinological circles.

A voiced palatal lateral approximant contrasts phonemically with its voiceless counterpart /ʎ̥/ in the Xumi language spoken in China.