L

L, or l, is the twelfth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is el (pronounced ), plural els.

History

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

Use in writing systems

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

English
In English orthography,  usually represents the phoneme , 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 ) occurs before a vowel, as in lip or blend, while the velarized alveolar lateral approximant (IPA ) occurs in bell and milk. This velarization does not occur in many European languages that use ; it is also a factor making the pronunciation of  difficult for users of languages that lack  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  is known as lambdacism.

In English orthography,  is often silent in such words as walk or could (though its presence can modify the preceding vowel letter's value), and it is usually silent in such words as palm and psalm; however, there is some regional variation. L is the eleventh most frequently used letter in the English language.

Other languages
 usually represents the sound  or some other lateral consonant.

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

A palatal lateral approximant or palatal  (IPA ) occurs in many languages, and is represented by  in Italian,  in Spanish and Catalan,  in Portuguese, and  in Latvian.

In Washo, lower-case  represents a typical [l] sound, while upper-case  represents a voiceless [l̥] sound, a bit like double  in Welsh.

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. Historically, it was commonly used as a currency sign for the British pound sterling (to abbreviate the Latin , a pound, see £sd); in modern usage it has been overtaken by the pound sign (£), which is based on the blackletter form of the letter. In running text, its lower-case form (usually italicised), l, was more often seen.

The Roman numeral L represents the number 50.

In the International system of units, the liter (or litre) is abbreviated using an upper-case (or a lower-case) L. 

In watchmaking, the ligne (a traditional French measure of length still used in that industry) is abbreviated using an upper-case L.

In chemistry, L is used as a symbol for the Avogadro constant.

Forms and variants

In most sans-serif typefaces, the lowercase letter ell , written , may be difficult to distinguish from the uppercase letter "eye" ; in some serif typefaces, the glyph  may be confused with the glyph , the digit one. To avoid such confusion, some newer computer fonts (such as Trebuchet MS) have a finial, a curve to the right at the bottom of the lowercase letter ell.

Another means of reducing such confusion used in mathematics, European road signs and in advertisements is to use symbol , which is a cursive, handwriting-style lowercase form of the letter "ell". In Unicode, this symbol is  from the "letter-like symbols" block. In Japan, for example, this is the symbol for the liter. However, the International Committee for Weights and Measures recommends using  or  for the liter. (without specifying a typeface). 

Another solution, sometimes seen in Web typography, uses a serif font for the lowercase letter ell, such as , in otherwise sans-serif text.

In the blackletter type used in England until the seventeenth century, the letter L is rendered as .

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
IPA-specific symbols related to L:        
IPA superscript symbols related to L: 𐞛 𐞜
Extensions to IPA for disordered speech (extIPA): 𝼄 𐞝
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to L:  and 
ₗ : Subscript small l was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902
ȴ : L with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics
Ꞁ ꞁ : Turned L was used by William Pryce to designate the Welsh voiced lateral spirant [ɬ] The lower case is also used in the Romic alphabet. In Unicode, these are , and .
𝼦 : Small letter l with mid-height left hook was used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language.
Other variations are used for phonetic transcription: ᶅ ᶩ ᶪ ᶫ 𝼑 𝼓
Ꝇ ꝇ : Broken L was used in some medieval Nordic manuscripts
Teuthonista phonetic transcription-specific symbols related to L:

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
ℒ ℓ : Script letter L (capital and lowercase, respectively)
£ : pound sign
Ꝉ ꝉ : Forms of L were used for medieval scribal abbreviations
 Ł or ł, "L with stroke" used in Polish and many neighbouring languages

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
 : 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 might derive from old Italic L
𐌻 : Gothic letter laaz

Computing codes

 1

Other representations

Notes

References

External links

ISO basic Latin letters