Back Consonante líquida AST Kensonenn linkus BR Consonant líquida Catalan Liquida German Flua konsonanto EO Consonante líquida Spanish همخوان روان FA Likvida Finnish Consonne liquide French Consoante líquida GL
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In linguistics, a liquid consonant or simply liquid is any of a class of consonants that consists of rhotics and voiced lateral approximants, which are also sometimes described as "R-like sounds" and "L-like sounds". The word liquid seems to be a calque of the Ancient Greek word ὑγρός (hygrós, transl. moist), initially used by grammarian Dionysius Thrax to describe Greek sonorants.
Liquid consonants are more prone to be part of consonant clusters and of the syllable nucleus. Their third formants are generally non-predictable based on the first two formants. Another important feature is their complex articulation, which makes them a hard consonant class to study with precision and the last consonants to be produced by children during their phonological development. They are also more likely to undergo certain types of phonological changes such as assimilation, dissimilation and metathesis.
Most languages have at least one liquid in their phonemic inventory. English has two, /l/ and /ɹ/.