Palatal lateral approximant

The palatal lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is $\langle\rangle$, a rotated lowercase letter $\langley\rangle$ (not to be confused with lowercase lambda, $\langleλ\rangle$), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is L.

Many languages that were previously thought to have a palatal lateral approximant actually have a lateral approximant that is, broadly, alveolo-palatal; that is to say, it is articulated at a place in-between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate (excluded), and it may be variously described as alveolo-palatal, lamino-postalveolar, or postalveolo-prepalatal. Of 13 languages investigated by, many of them Romance, none have a 'true' palatal. This is likely the case for several other languages listed here. Some languages, like Portuguese and Catalan, have a lateral approximant that varies between alveolar and alveolo-palatal.

There is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the alveolo-palatal lateral approximant. If precision is desired, it may be transcribed $\langle\rangle$ or $\langle\rangle$; these are essentially equivalent, because the contact includes both the blade and body (but not the tip) of the tongue. There is also a non-IPA letter $\langle\rangle$, used especially in Sinological circles.

According to some scholars, the palatal lateral approximant contrasts phonemically with its voiceless counterpart  in some subdialects of Trøndersk, which is a dialect of Norwegian.