A voiced alveolar lateral flap is a type of consonantal sound, found in some spokenlanguages. 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.[6]
Additionally, some languages have a voiced postalveolar lateral flap, which can be transcribed in the IPA with the retracted diacritic, such as ⟨ɺ̠⟩.
Its manner of articulation is tap or flap, which means it is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (usually the tongue) is thrown against another.