Alveolar approximant

The alveolar approximant is the phoneme /l/, which is realised in two quite dissimilar versions. One version, the "light" l, occurs only in front of vowels or vowel-like sounds, the other, the "dark" l, occurs in all other positions. The light l is pronounced with the tongue relatively low, but generally in the position of the following vowel, whereas the dark l is pronounced with the back of the tongue raised towards the velum. The dark l has no counterpart in Norwegian, and cannot be likened to any dialectal variety of Norwegian l. It therefore creates pronunciation difficulties for all Norwegians. The light variant is, on the other hand, quite similar to its Norwegian counterpart. The Light l is here shown on the left, the dark l is shown on the right.

as in

and

as in