LL L L, or l, is the twelfth letter of the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. 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. 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. 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. In recent years , the letters "L" and "W" have become an internet meme, respectively standing for "loss" and "win". "L", in particular, is commonly used in popular culture, often referring to the slang definition of ownership. "Take the L", respectively, means to accept this particular defeat. Forms and variants. In some sans-serif fonts (i.e., typefaces), the lowercase letter "ell" may be difficult to distinguish from the uppercase letter "eye" or the digit "one" . To avoid such confusion, some newer fonts have a finial, a curve to the right at the bottom of the lowercase letter "ell". Another means of reducing such confusion , increasingly common on European road signs and in advertisements, uses a cursive, handwriting-style lowercase letter "ell" . A special letter-like symbol is sometimes used for this purpose in mathematics and elsewhere. In Unicode, this symbol is with HTML numeric character reference codice_1. In Japan, for example, this is the symbol for the liter. However, the International System of Units recommends using Unicode symbols or for the liter. Another solution, sometimes seen in Web typography, uses a serif font for the lowercase letter "ell", such as , in otherwise sans-serif text. L L, or l, is the twelfth letter of