| Above: | Lateral release |
| Ipa Symbol: | ◌ˡ |
| Decimal1: | 737 |
| Ipa Number: | 426 |
In phonetics, a lateral release is the release of a plosive consonant into a lateral consonant. Such sounds are transcribed in the IPA with a superscript, for example as pronounced as /[tˡ]/ in English spotless pronounced as /[ˈspɒtˡlɨs]/. In Old English words such as middle/middel in which, historically, the tongue made separate contacts with the alveolar ridge for the pronounced as //d// and pronounced as //l//, pronounced as /[ˈmɪdəl]/, many speakers today make only one tongue contact. That is, the pronounced as //d// is laterally released directly into the pronounced as //l//: pronounced as /[ˈmɪdˡl̩]/. While this is a minor phonetic detail in English (in fact, it is commonly transcribed as having no audible release: pronounced as /[ˈspɒt̚lɨs]/, pronounced as /[ˈmɪd̚l̩]/), it may be more important in other languages.
In most languages (as in English), laterally-released plosives are straightforwardly analyzed as biphonemic clusters whose second element is pronounced as //l//. In the Hmong language, however, it is sometimes claimed that laterally-released consonants are unitary phonemes. According to Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson, the choice between one or another analysis is purely based on phonological convenience—there is no actual acoustic or articulatory difference between one language's "laterally-released plosive" and another language's biphonemic cluster.