A voiceless velar lateral fricative is a rare speech sound. As one element of an affricate, it is found for example in Zulu and Xhosa (see velar lateral ejective affricate). However, a simple fricative has only been reported from a few languages in the Caucasus and New Guinea.
In New Guinea, some of the ChimbuâÂÂWahgi languages such as Melpa, Middle Wahgi, and Nii, have a velar lateral, which they write with a double-bar el (â±Â, ⱡ). One speaker of Kuman was found to have the voiceless fricative in syllable coda position as an allophone of a voiced velar lateral .
The extIPA has the letter for this sound. It was added to Unicode in 2021.
Features of a voiceless velar lateral fricative:
Some scholars also posit a voiceless velar lateral approximant distinct from the fricative. The approximant may be represented in the IPA as .