Delateralization is a replacement of a lateral consonant by a median consonant.
Arguably, the best known example of this sound change is , which occurs in many Spanish and some Galician dialects.
In accents with , the palatal lateral approximant merges with the palatal approximant which, phonetically, can be an affricate (word-initially and after ), an approximant (in other environments) or a fricative (in the same environments as the approximant, but only in careful speech).
In Romanian, the palatal lateral approximant merged with centuries ago. The same happened to the historic palatal nasal , although that is an example of lenition.
In French, â¨ilâ© (except in the word "" ) and â¨illâ© (usually followed by -e; exceptions include ) are usually pronounced . It generally occurs word- or morpheme-finally. For example, "work" (noun) , "(he/she/it) used to work" , "kind" feminine singular .
Furthermore, when a French word ending in -al is pluralized, rather than becoming -als, it becomes -aux. For example, "a special animal" > "(some) special animals".
In some accents, when [l] appears word-finally, or after a vowel and before a consonant, it can become [w]. For example, little [ÃÂlê.tðlé] > [ÃÂlê.tðwé], bell [bÃÂl] > [bÃÂw], help [hÃÂlp] > [hÃÂwpð].
The Polish letter à  represents the sound [w]. The orthography is evidence of an original lateral.
Another known example of delateralization is the sound change that happened to the Arabic á¸ÂÃÂd, which, historically, was a lateral consonant, either a pharyngealized voiced alveolar lateral fricative or a similar affricated sound or . The affricated form is suggested by loans of Ḡinto Akkadian as ld or lá¹ and into Malaysian as dl. However, some linguists, such as the French orientalist André Roman supposes that the letter was actually a pharyngealized voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant , similar to the Polish à º, which is not a lateral sound.
In modern Arabic, there are three possible realizations of this sound, all of which are central: