makes a voiceless continuant a fricative, even if lacking a greater constriction in the oral cavity than a voiced approximant. argue that Burmese and Standard Tibetan have voiceless lateral approximants and Navajo and Zulu voiceless lateral fricatives , but also say that "in other cases it is difficult to decide whether a voiceless lateral should be described as an approximant or a fricative". compared voiceless laterals in Estonian Swedish, Icelandic, and Welsh and found that Welsh-speakers consistently used , that Icelandic-speakers consistently used , and that speakers of Estonian Swedish varied in their pronunciation. They conclude that there is "a range of variants within voiceless laterals, rather than a categorical split between lateral fricatives and voiceless approximant laterals". Nasalized approximants (Not to be confused with 'nasal continuant', which is a synonym for nasal consonant) Examples are: nasal palatal approximant nasal labialized velar approximant voiceless nasal glottal approximant In Portuguese, the nasal glides and historically became and in some words. In Edo, the nasalized allophones of the approximants and are nasal occlusives, and . What are transcribed as nasal approximants may include non-syllabic elements of nasal vowels or diphthongs. See also Liquid consonant List of phonetics topics Semivowel Notes References Manner of articulation