Editing Lateral consonant (section)

==Ambiguous centrality==
The IPA requires sounds to be defined as to centrality, as either central or lateral. However, languages may be ambiguous as to some consonants' laterality.{{sfn|Ladefoged|Maddieson|1996|p=243}} A well-known example is the liquid consonant in Japanese, represented in common transliteration systems as {{angle brackets|r}}, which can be recognized as a (post)[[alveolar tap]] {{IPA|/ɾ/}},<ref name="ipajp">Okada, Hideo (1999), "Japanese", in ''International Phonetic Association, Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet'', Cambridge University Press, pp. 117–119, {{isbn|978-0-52163751-0}}.</ref> [[alveolar lateral flap]] /ɺ/, (post)[[alveolar lateral approximant]] /l/, (post)[[alveolar approximant]] /ɹ/,<ref name="ipajp"/> [[voiced retroflex stop]] /ɖ/,<ref>Arai, Takayuki; Warner, Natasha; Greenberg, Steven (2007), "Analysis of spontaneous Japanese in a multi-language telephone-speech corpus", Acoustical Science and Technology, 28 (1): 46–48, {{doi|
10.1250/ast.28.46}}</ref> and various less common forms.