The apical consonants [l], [d], and [n] are quite similar in articulatory terms, all voiced sounds involving the occlusion of the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge or the back of the upper teeth. Many languages show dialectal variation among these sounds. There is, e.g., a well-known tribe of American Indians known variously as Dakota, Lakota, or Nakota. A number of Sino-Tibetan (ST) etymologies show interchange between [l] and [d], for which the conditioning factors are rather obscure, in a manner reminiscent of the so-called ”sporadic” cases of d The symbol is abbreviated l in Indo-European.