The alveolar approximant is a consonant. We use it in some spoken languages. International Phonetic Alphabet represents the alveolar and postalveolar approximants as ⟨⟩. International Phonetic Alphabet represents it as a lowercase letter "r" rotated 180 degrees, or in broad transcription ⟨⟩; the X-SAMPA symbol of this is ⟨r\⟩.