Ll

Ll/ll is a digraph that occurs in several natural languages.

Not to be confused with ǁ.

English

In English, ll often represents the same sound as single l: /l/. The doubling is used to indicate that the preceding vowel is (historically) short, or that the "l" sound is to be extended longer than a single "l" would provide (etymologically, in latinisms coming from a gemination). It is worth noting that different English language traditions transpose "l" and "ll": British English "travelled" and like words, for example, are usually spelled with a single "l" (i.e., "traveled," et al.) in U.S. English.

Welsh
The Middle-Welsh LL ligature.[1]
Unicode: U+1EFA and U+1EFB.

In Welsh, ll stands for a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative sound. The IPA signifies this sound as [ɬ]. This sound is very common in place names in Wales because it occurs in the word Llan, for example, Llanelli, where the ll appears twice, or Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, where the ll appears three times.

In Welsh, Ll is a separate letter from L (e.g., lwc sorts before llaw). This led to its ligature being included in the Latin Extended Additional Unicode block at U+A746 (uppercase) and U+A747 (lowercase), displaying as Ỻ and ỻ respectively.[2] This ligature is seldom used in Modern Welsh, although it is included in three fonts commissioned by the Welsh Government in 2020.[3]

Spanish

In Spanish, 'll ' was considered from 1754 to 2010 the fourteenth letter of the Spanish alphabet because of its representation of a palatal lateral articulation consonant phoneme (as defined by the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language).[4]

  • This single letter was called "elle," pronounced "elye," but often losing the /l/ sound and simplifying to "eh-ye."
  • The letter was collated after L as a separate entry from 1803 until April 1994 when the X Congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies adopted standard Latin alphabet collation rules. Since then, the digraph ll has been considered a sequence of two characters.[5] (A similar situation occurred with the Spanish-language digraph ch.)
  • Hypercorrection leads some to wrongly capitalize ll as a single letter, as with the Dutch IJ, for example "LLosa" instead of "Llosa." In handwriting, Ll is written as a ligature of two Ls, with distinct uppercase and lowercase forms.
  • Today, most Spanish speakers outside of Spain pronounce ll with virtually the same sound as y, a phenomenon called yeísmo. In much of the Spanish-speaking Americas, and in many regions of Spain, ll is produced /ʝ/ (voiced palatal fricative); in Colombia and Tabasco, Mexico, as well as Rioplatense speakers in Argentina, pronounce ll as /ʒ/ (voiced postalveolar fricative) or /ʃ/ (voiceless postalveolar fricative).

Galician

In official Galician spelling the ll combination stands for the phoneme /ʎ/ (palatal lateral approximant, a palatal counterpart of /l/).

Catalan
ŀl ligature as used in Catalan on a Barcelona Metro sign

In Catalan, ll represents the phoneme /ʎ/. For example, as in llengua (language, tongue), enllaç (linkage, connection), or coltell (knife).

L with Middle Dot

In order to not confuse ll /ʎ/ with a geminated l /ll/, Catalan uses an L with a middle dot (punt volat in Catalan or interpunct) in the digraph ŀl, for example exceŀlent (excellent). The first character in the digraph, Ŀ and ŀ, is included in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block at U+013F (uppercase) and U+140 (lowercase) respectively.

In Catalan typography, l·l is intended to fill two spaces, not three,[6] so the interpunct is placed in the narrow space between the two L: ĿL and ŀl. However, it is common to write L·L and l·l, occupying three spaces. L.L and l.l, although sometimes seen, are incorrect.

Philippine languages

While Philippine languages like Tagalog and Ilocano write ly or li when spelling Spanish loanwords, ll still survives in proper nouns. However, the pronunciation of ll is simply [lj] rather than [ʎ]. Hence the surnames Llamzon, Llamas, Padilla and Villanueva are respectively pronounced [ljɐmˈzon]/[ljɐmˈson], [ˈljɐmas], [pɐˈdɪːlja] and [ˌbɪːljanuˈwɛːba]/[ˌvɪːljanuˈwɛːva].

Furthermore, in Ilocano ll represents a geminate alveolar lateral approximant /lː/, like in Italian.

Albanian

In Albanian, L stands for the sound /l/, while Ll is pronounced as the velarized sound /ɫ/.

Icelandic

In Icelandic, the ll represents either the sound combination [tɬ] (similar to a voiceless alveolar lateral affricate) or [tl], depending on the context.[7] It occurs in the words fell (fell, small mountain), fjall (mountain), and jökull (glacier, ice cap), and consequently in the names of many geographical features, including Eyjafjallajökull.

Broken L

In Old Icelandic, the broken L ligature appears in some instances, such as vꜹꝇum (field) and oꝇo (all).[8] It takes the form of a lowercase l with the top half shifted to the left, connected to the lower half with a thin horizontal stroke. This ligature is encoded in the Latin Extended-D Unicode block at U+A746 (uppercase) and U+A747 (lowercase), displaying as Ꝇ and ꝇ respectively.

Miscellanea

In the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization of Mandarin Chinese, final -ll indicates a falling tone on a syllable ending in /ɻ/, which is otherwise spelled -l.

In Central Alaskan Yup'ik and the Greenlandic language, ll stands for /ɬː/.

In Haida (Bringhurst orthography), ll is glottalized /ˀl/.

See also

References
  1. Example of a book using the "ll" ligature. Retrieved 20 September 2014.
  2. Everson, Michael & al. "Proposal to add medievalist characters to the UCS Archived 2011-07-16 at the Wayback Machine". 30 Jan 2006. Accessed 29 January 2013.
  3. Wong, Henry (March 20, 2020). "A typeface has been designed for the Welsh language". designweek.co.uk. Retrieved April 12, 2020.
  4. Real Academia Española y Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, Ortografía de la llengua española (2010), tapa rústica, primera edición impresa en México, Editorial Planeta Mexicana, S.A. de C.V., bajo el sello editorial ESPASA M.R., México D.F., marzo de 2011, páginas 64 y 65.
  5. X Congreso (Madrid, 1994), official website.
  6. Pompeu, Fabra (September 1984). "Conversa 323, del 22.01.1923, i Conversa 391, del 13.06.1923". In Joaquim Rafel i Fontanals (ed.). Converses Filològiques Volum II (PDF) (in Catalan). Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain: Fundació Enciclopèdia Catalana. ISBN 84-350-5111-0. Retrieved 29 December 2012.
  7. "Language Log". Retrieved 20 September 2014.
  8. Bulenda, Attila Márk. Icelandic or Norwegian Scribe? An Empirical Study of AM 310 4to, AM 655 XII-XIII 4to and AM 655 XIV 4to (PDF) (MA). Háskóli Íslands. p. 19. Retrieved May 3, 2020.
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