Delateralization


Delateralization is a replacement of a lateral consonant by a median consonant.

Yeísmo (Romance languages)

Arguably, the best known example of this sound change is yeísmo, which occurs in many Spanish and some Galician dialects.
In accents with yeísmo, the palatal lateral approximant merges with the palatal approximant which, phonetically, can be an affricate , an approximant or a fricative .
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, ⟨il⟩ and ⟨ill⟩ are usually pronounced . It generally occurs word- or morpheme-finally. For example, travail "work" , travaillait " used to work" , gentille "kind" feminine singular .
Furthermore, when a French word ending in al is pluralized, rather than becoming als, it becomes aux. For example, un animal spécial "a special animal" > des animaux spéciaux " special animals".

English

In some accents, when appears word-finally, or after a vowel and before a consonant, it can become . For example, little > , bell > , help > .

Polish

The Polish letter Ł represents the sound . The orthography is evidence of an original lateral.

Arabic ''Ḍād''

Another known example of delateralization is the sound change that happened to the Arabic ḍād, 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 ḍ into Akkadian as ld or lṭ 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 ź, which is not a lateral sound.
In modern Arabic, there are three possible realizations of this sound, all of which are central: