# Lamedh

Lamedh or lamed is the twelfth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Hebrew lāmeḏ ל‎, Aramaic lāmaḏ 𐡋, Syriac lāmaḏ ܠ, Arabic lām ل‎, and Phoenician lāmd 𐤋. Its sound value is [l]. It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪁‎‎‎, South Arabian 𐩡, and Ge'ez ለ.
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Lambda (Λ), Latin L, and Cyrillic El (Л).

## Origin

The letter is usually considered to have originated from the representation of an ox-goad, i.e. a cattle prod, or a shepherd's crook, i.e. a pastoral staff. In Proto-Semitic a goad was called *lamed-.

## Arabic lām

The letter is named لام lām /laːm/.

### Orthography

Its form depends on its position in the word:
| Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
| Glyph form: (Help) | ل‎ | ـل‎ | ـلـ‎ | لـ‎ |

### Grammatical functions

Lām has functions as a grammatical particle when used as a prefix:
* Prepositional lām (لام جارة)
* Lām of ownership (لام المُلك)
* Lām of association (لام الاختصاص)
* Lām of purpose (لام التعليل)
* Lām of absolute negation (لام الجحود)
* Imperative lām (لام الأمر)
* Lām of affirmative emphasis (لام التوكيد)
Lām-kasra (لـِ, /li/) is essentially a preposition meaning 'to' or 'for', as in لِوالدي liwālidī, 'for my father'. In this usage, it has become concatenated with other words to form new constructions often treated as independent words: for instance, لِماذا limāḏā, meaning 'why?', is derived from لـِ li and ماذا māḏā, meaning 'what?' thus getting 'for what?'. A semantically equivalent construction is found in most Romance languages, e.g. French pourquoi, Spanish por qué, and Italian perché (though ché is an archaism and not in current use).
The other construction, lām-fatḥa (لَـ /la/) is used as an emphatic particle in very formal Arabic and in certain fixed constructions, such as لَقد laqad (itself an emphatic particle for past-tense verbs) and in the conditional structure لو...لَـ law...la, effectively one of the forms of 'if...then...'.

## Hebrew lamed

Orthographic variants :
| Various print fonts | Various print fonts | Various print fonts | Cursive Hebrew | Rashi script |
| Serif | Sans-serif | Monospaced | Cursive Hebrew | Rashi script |
| ל | ל | ל | | |
Hebrew spelling: לָמֶד

### Pronunciation

Lamed transcribes as an alveolar lateral approximant /l/.

### Significance

Lamed in gematria represents the number 30.
With the letter Vav it refers to the Lamedvavniks, the 36 righteous people who save the world from destruction.
As an abbreviation, it can stand for litre. Also, a sign on a car with a Lamed on it means that the driver is a student of driving (the Lamed stands for lomed, learner). It is also used as the Electoral symbol for the Yisrael Beiteinu party.
As a prefix, it can have two purposes:
* It can be attached to verb roots, designating the infinitive (Daber means "speak", Ledaber means to speak).
* It can also act as a preposition meaning "to" or "for".

## Syriac lamadh

| Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
| Glyph form: (Help) | ܠ‎‎ | ـܠ‎‎ | ـܠ‎ـ‎ | ܠ‎ـ‎ |

## Character encodings

Character information :
| Preview | ל | ל | ل | ل | ܠ | ܠ | ࠋ | ࠋ |
| Unicode name | HEBREW LETTER LAMED | HEBREW LETTER LAMED | ARABIC LETTER LAM | ARABIC LETTER LAM | SYRIAC LETTER LAMADH | SYRIAC LETTER LAMADH | SAMARITAN LETTER LABAT | SAMARITAN LETTER LABAT |
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 1500 | U+05DC | 1604 | U+0644 | 1824 | U+0720 | 2059 | U+080B |
| UTF-8 | 215 156 | D7 9C | 217 132 | D9 84 | 220 160 | DC A0 | 224 160 139 | E0 A0 8B |
| Numeric character reference | &#1500; | &#x5DC; | &#1604; | &#x644; | &#1824; | &#x720; | &#2059; | &#x80B; |
Character information :
| Preview | 𐎍 | 𐎍 | 𐡋 | 𐡋 | 𐤋 | 𐤋 |
| Unicode name | UGARITIC LETTER LAMDA | UGARITIC LETTER LAMDA | IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER LAMEDH | IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER LAMEDH | PHOENICIAN LETTER LEMDA | PHOENICIAN LETTER LEMDA |
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 66445 | U+1038D | 67659 | U+1084B | 67851 | U+1090B |
| UTF-8 | 240 144 142 141 | F0 90 8E 8D | 240 144 161 139 | F0 90 A1 8B | 240 144 164 139 | F0 90 A4 8B |
| UTF-16 | 55296 57229 | D800 DF8D | 55298 56395 | D802 DC4B | 55298 56587 | D802 DD0B |
| Numeric character reference | &#66445; | &#x1038D; | &#67659; | &#x1084B; | &#67851; | &#x1090B; |
Variants:
* U+08A6 ࢦ ARABIC LETTER LAM WITH DOUBLE BAR