Lateral release (phonetics)

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 in English spotless . In English words such as middle in which, historically, the tongue made separate contacts with the alveolar ridge for the and , , many speakers today make only one tongue contact. That is, the is laterally released directly into the : . While this is a minor phonetic detail in English (in fact, it is commonly transcribed as having no audible release: , ), it may be more important in other languages.