A lateral is a consonant produced with the tongue tip making contact with the alveolar ridge (or other place of articulation) while air flows freely around one or both sides of the tongue. English has one lateral phoneme: /l/.
English /l/ is a voiced alveolar lateral approximant. It has two principal allophones whose distribution is predictable:
Occurs before vowels (in the syllable onset):
The tongue tip touches the alveolar ridge. The front of the tongue is raised, giving the sound a relatively "bright" quality. The back of the tongue remains low.
Occurs before consonants and at word boundaries (in the syllable coda):
The tongue tip still touches the alveolar ridge, but the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum (velarisation), giving a "dark," hollow quality. In IPA, this velarisation is marked with the tilde: [ɫ].
The clear/dark distinction is not binary; there is a gradient from fully clear to fully dark, depending on the phonetic environment. The generalisation: the closer /l/ is to a following vowel, the clearer it is; the further from a following vowel, the darker.
| Variety | Pattern |
|---|---|
| RP / Southern British | Clear in onsets, dark in codas (as described above) |
| General American | Somewhat darker overall; dark in most positions |
| Irish English | Clearer overall; may use clear /l/ in all positions |
| Cockney / Estuary | Dark /l/ vocalised to [o] or [w]: milk → [mɪok], feel → [fiːo] |
| Scottish English | Often clear in all positions |
L-vocalisation, the replacement of dark [ɫ] with a back vowel, is spreading rapidly in British English, particularly among younger speakers in the South-East.
The most significant teaching challenge involving /l/ is its confusion with /r/ by speakers of languages that have a single liquid phoneme:
Many languages lack a dark [ɫ]:
Vietnamese has /l/ (clear) in onset position only. There is no dark /l/ and no coda /l/ in Vietnamese. Vietnamese learners may: