L

L
L l
(See below)
Writing cursive forms of L
Usage
Writing system Latin script
Type Alphabet ic and Logographic
Language of origin Latin language
Phonetic usage [l]
[ɫ]
[ɮ]
[ɬ]
[ʎ]
/ɛl/
Unicode value U+004C, U+006C
Alphabetical position 12
History
Development
Time period ~-700 to present
Descendants  • ɮ
 • Ꝇ ꝇ
 • ℒ ℓ
 • £
 • ₤
 • ᛚ
 • ꬸ
 • Ⅼ
Sisters Л
Љ
Ӆ
Ԯ
ל
ل
ل
ܠ
ࠋ
𐡋
ለ
ℓ
Variations (See below)
Other
Other letters commonly used with l(x), lj, ll, ly
ISO basic
Latin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd
Ee Ff Gg Hh
Ii Jj Kk Ll
Mm Nn Oo Pp
Qq Rr Ss Tt
Uu Vv Ww Xx
Yy Zz

L (named el /ɛl/)[1] is the twelfth letter of the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet, used in words such as lagoon, lantern, and less.

History

Egyptian hieroglyph Phoenician
lamedh		 Etruscan L Greek
Lambda
S39

Lamedh may have come from a pictogram of an ox goad or cattle prod. Some have suggested a shepherd's staff.[2]

Use in writing systems

Phonetic and phonemic transcription

In phonetic and phonemic transcription, the International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨l⟩ to represent the lateral alveolar approximant.

English

In English orthography, ⟨l⟩ usually represents the phoneme /l/, which can have several sound values, depending on the speaker's accent, and whether it occurs before or after a vowel. The alveolar lateral approximant (the sound represented in IPA by lowercase [l]) occurs before a vowel, as in lip or blend, while the velarized alveolar lateral approximant (IPA [ɫ]) occurs in bell and milk. This velarization does not occur in many European languages that use ⟨l⟩; it is also a factor making the pronunciation of ⟨l⟩ difficult for users of languages that lack ⟨l⟩ or have different values for it, such as Japanese or some southern dialects of Chinese. A medical condition or speech impediment restricting the pronunciation of ⟨l⟩ is known as lambdacism.

In English orthography, ⟨l⟩ is often silent in such words as walk or could (though its presence can modify the preceding vowel letter's sound), and it is usually silent in such words as palm and psalm; however, there is some regional variation.

Other languages

⟨l⟩ usually represents the sound [l] or some other lateral consonant.

Common digraphs include ⟨ll⟩, which has a value identical to ⟨l⟩ in English, but has the separate value voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (IPA [ɬ]) in Welsh, where it can appear in an initial position. In Spanish, ⟨ll⟩ represents [ʎ], [j], [ʝ], [ɟʝ], or [ʃ], depending on dialect.

A palatal lateral approximant or palatal ⟨l⟩ (IPA [ʎ]) occurs in many languages, and is represented by ⟨gli⟩ in Italian, ⟨ll⟩ in Spanish and Catalan, ⟨lh⟩ in Portuguese, and ⟨ļ⟩ in Latvian.

Other uses

The capital letter L is used as the currency sign for the Albanian lek and the Honduran lempira. It was often used, especially in handwriting, as the currency sign for the Italian lira. It is also infrequently used as a substitute for the pound sign (£), which is based on it.

The Roman numeral Ⅼ represents the number 50.[3]

Forms and variants

In some fonts, the lowercase letter ⟨l⟩ may be difficult to distinguish from the digit one ⟨1⟩, or an uppercase letter ⟨I⟩. In recent times, many new fonts have curved the lowercase form to the right. It is increasingly common, especially on European road signs and advertisements, to use a script or cursive, handwriting-style character (e.g. l). A special letter-like symbol ⟨ℓ⟩ is sometimes used for this purpose in mathematics and elsewhere. In Japan, for example, this is the symbol for the liter. Its LaTeX command is \ell. In Unicode it is U+2113 ℓ SCRIPT SMALL L (with a numeric character reference of ℓ). however, this glyph has been deprecated by the SI.[4]. Another solution sometimes seen in Web typography is to use a serif font for "lower-case ell" in otherwise sans-serif material (1 l).

  • IPA-specific symbols related to L: ʟ ɫ ɬ ɭ ɺ ɮ ꞎ ˡ
  • Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to L:[5] U+1D0C ᴌ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL L WITH STROKE and U+1D38 ᴸ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL L
  • ₗ : Subscript small l was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902[6]
  • ȴ : L with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics[7]
  • Ꞁ ꞁ : Turned L was used by William Pryce to designate the Welsh voiced lateral spirant [ɬ][8]
  • Other variations are used for phonetic transcription:[9] ᶅ ᶩ ᶪ ᶫ
  • Ꝇ ꝇ : Broken L was used in some medieval Nordic manuscripts[10]
  • Teuthonista phonetic transcription-specific symbols related to R:[11]
    • U+AB37 ꬷ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH INVERTED LAZY S
    • U+AB38 ꬸ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH DOUBLE MIDDLE TILDE
    • U+AB39 ꬹ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH MIDDLE RING
    • U+AB5D ꭝ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH INVERTED LAZY S
    • U+AB5E ꭞ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH MIDDLE TILDE
  • L with diacritics: Ĺ ĺ Ł ł Ľ ľ Ḹ ḹ L̃ l̃ Ļ ļ Ŀ ŀ Ḷ ḷ Ḻ ḻ Ḽ ḽ Ƚ ƚ Ⱡ ⱡ

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

  • 𐤋 : Semitic letter Lamedh, from which the following symbols originally derive
    • Λ λ : Greek letter Lambda, from which the following letters derive
      • Л л : Cyrillic letter El
      • Ⲗⲗ : Coptic letter Lamda
      • 𐌋 : Old Italic letter L, which is the ancestor of modern Latin L
        • ᛚ : Runic letter laguz, which probably derives from old Italic L
      • 𐌻 : Gothic letter laaz

Computing codes

CharacterLl
Unicode nameLATIN CAPITAL LETTER L    LATIN SMALL LETTER L
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode76U+004C108U+006C
UTF-8764C1086C
Numeric character referenceLLll
EBCDIC family211D314793
ASCII 1764C1086C
1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations

References

  1. ↑ "L" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989) Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged. (1993); "el", "ells", op. cit.
  2. ↑ "Ancient Hebrew Research Center". Retrieved 12 January 2015.
  3. ↑ Gordon, Arthur E. (1983). Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy. University of California Press. p. 44. ISBN 9780520038981. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
  4. ↑ "Letterlike symbols". Charts (Beta). Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  5. ↑ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
  6. ↑ Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF).
  7. ↑ Cook, Richard; Everson, Michael (2001-09-20). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
  8. ↑ Everson, Michael (2006-08-06). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS" (PDF).
  9. ↑ Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
  10. ↑ Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF).
  11. ↑ Everson, Michael; Dicklberger, Alois; Pentzlin, Karl; Wandl-Vogt, Eveline (2011-06-02). "L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF).
  12. ↑ Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF).
  • The dictionary definition of L at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of l at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of ℓ at Wiktionary
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