Lateral fricatives are common among
indigenous languages of western North America, such as
Nahuatl,
Tlingit and
Navajo, and in
North Caucasian languages, such as
Avar. It is also found in
African languages, such as
Zulu, and
Asian languages, such as
Chukchi, some
Yue dialects like
Taishanese, the
Hlai languages of Hainan, and several
Formosan languages and dialects in
Taiwan. Lateral fricatives are rare in
European languages outside the
Caucasus, but it is found notably in
Welsh, in which it is written . Several Welsh names beginning with this sound (
Llwyd ,
Llywelyn ) have been borrowed into English and then retain the Welsh spelling but are pronounced with an (Lloyd, Llewellyn), or they are substituted with (pronounced ) (Floyd, Fluellen). It was also
found in certain dialects of
Lithuanian Yiddish.
Modern South Arabian languages are known for their apparent archaic Semitic features, especially in their system of
phonology. For example, they preserve the
lateral fricatives and / of
Proto-Semitic. Except for the Modern South Arabian languages, every other extant Semitic language has merged Proto-Semitic *s2 into one of the two other plain sibilants. The phoneme was reconstructed for the most ancient
Hebrew speech of the
Ancient Israelites. The orthography of
Biblical Hebrew, however, did not directly indicate it. It is, however, attested by later developments: was written with , but the letter was also used for the sound . Later, merged with , a sound that had been written only with . As a result, three etymologically distinct modern Hebrew phonemes can be distinguished: written , written (with later
niqqud pointing שׁ), and evolving from and written (with later
niqqud pointing שׂ). The specific pronunciation of evolving to from is known based on comparative evidence since is the corresponding
Proto-Semitic phoneme and is still attested in Modern South Arabian languages, and early borrowings indicate it from Ancient Hebrew (e.g. < Greek < Hebrew ). The phoneme began to merge with in Late Biblical Hebrew, as is indicated by interchange of orthographic and , possibly under the influence of
Aramaic, and became the rule in
Mishnaic Hebrew. In all Jewish reading traditions, and have merged completely, but in
Samaritan Hebrew has instead merged into . In Sindarin, it is written as initially and medially and finally, and in Quenya, it appears only initially and is written .
Dental or denti-alveolar Alveolar Alveolar approximant Velarized dental or alveolar approximant Semitic languages The sound is conjectured as a phoneme for
Proto-Semitic language, usually transcribed as ; it has evolved into Arabic ,
Hebrew : Among
Semitic languages, the sound (with its emphatic counterpart ṣ́) still exists in contemporary Modern South Arabian languages;
Soqotri, In Ge'ez, it is written with the letter
Śawt. ==Voiceless lateral-median fricative==