L (phoneme)

• L is 'a voiced alveolar lateral continuant'. Its representation in the IPA is /l/.
  • The above phonetic description means that the sound of '-l-' is produced by a continuous stream of air round the sides of the tongue which forms a partial closure by raising the tip towards the alveola (tooth-ridge), while the vocal chords vibrate.
• There is also a "dark l" in many accents of English. This is a velarized allophone (/ɫ/) of the basic /l/:
  • that is, the back of the tongue is used as well as the front, as compared to the usual clear '-l-', made with the tip of the tongue.
• The clear '-l-' may be heard in RP 'live', 'clear', 'collar' etc.; the dark '-l-' in 'pull', 'kill' and 'bottle'. This may be influenced by phonetic context - the position of the '-l-' in a word. In RP, a final '-l-' (at the end of a syllable) is usually 'darker' than one in initial position. Readers may be able to spot the difference in their own tongue-positions between 'live' and 'fill'. The dark '-l-' may be heard in several British urban accents, for example Cockney, where it may be exaggerated into a vowel rather than an '-l-', as in 'ke[tt]-oo' IPA: /ˈkɛʔ ʊ[ɫ]/ and 'mi-ook' /ˈmɪ ʊ[ɫ]k/ for 'milk'. Here, the phoneme is 'vocalized' rather than velarized: that is, the tongue tip no longer makes contact with the alveola, so that the air stream no longer sounds as strong as vibration of the vocal cords. (This dialect feature may explain such Conventional abbreviations for forenames as 'Hal' for 'Harry'/'Henry', 'Tel' for 'Terry'/'Terence', and 'Del' for 'Derek'. The 'dark '-l-' is represented in IPA by /ɫ/.)
  • The Welsh 'double -l-', as in Llangollen, Llanelli' and Llewellyn represents another allophone. It is an unvoiced alveolar lateral fricative (IPA: /ɬ/; that is, the passage of air round the tongue is much more audible, because of stronger friction, or interruption of the airstream, while the vocal cords do not vibrate. To English ears, in initial position it can sound like the 'cl-' of 'clear', and in medial position like '-thl-'. English transliterations of Welsh used to represent '-ll-' with '-fl-', as in [[]Shakespeare]]'s Welsh captain Fluellen in Henry V, for 'Llewellyn'.

In ipa, note the difference between the symbols /ɫ/ ('l with tilde'), which is used for the dark '-l-', and /ɬ/ ('belted l'), which represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives, and is used for the Welsh double '-l-'.