L, or l, is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is el (pronounced ), plural els.["L" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989) Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged. (1993); "el", "ells", op. cit.]
History
Lamedh may have come from a pictogram of an ox
goad or
cattle prod. Some have suggested that it represents a shepherd's staff.
Typographic variants
In most
sans-serif typefaces, the lowercase letter
ell , written as the
glyph , may be difficult to distinguish from the uppercase letter "eye" (written as the glyph ); in some
serif typefaces, the glyph may be confused with the glyph , the digit
one. To avoid such confusion, some newer
(such as
Trebuchet MS) have a finial, a curve to the right at the bottom of the lowercase letter
ell. Other style variants are provided in
and
. All these variants of the letter are encoded in Unicode as or , allowing presentation to be chosen according to each context. For specialist mathematical and scientific use, there are a number of dedicated
in the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block.
In the Romain du Roi, where the ascenders of lowercase letters have symmetrical serifs at the top, has an extra serif to the left at the mean line to distinguish it from capital .
Another means of reducing such confusion is to use symbol , which is a cursive, handwriting-style lowercase form of the letter "ell". In Japan and Korea, for example, this is the symbol for the Litre. (The International Committee for Weights and Measures recommends using or for the liter,[ The Unicode Standard, Version 15.0, Chapter 22] The TeX syntax <math>\ell</math> renders it as . In mathematical formulas, an italic form ( ) of the script ℓ is the norm.
Use in writing systems
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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. In Received Pronunciation, 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 language. 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 Letter frequency 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|Welsh language]], where it can appear in an initial position. In Spanish, represents (, , , , , or , depending on dialect).
A palatal lateral approximant or palatal (IPA ) occurs in many languages, and is represented by in Italian language, in Spanish language and Catalan language, in Portuguese, and in Latvian language.
In Turkish language, generally represents , but represents before , , , or .
In Washo language, lower-case represents a typical l sound, while upper-case represents a Voicelessness l̥ sound, a bit like double in Welsh language.
Other systems
The International Phonetic Alphabet uses to represent the voiced alveolar lateral approximant and a
small caps to represent the voiced velar lateral approximant.
Other uses
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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 libra, 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 italics), l, was more often seen.
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The Roman numeral L represents the number 50.
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In the International system of units, the liter (or litre) is abbreviated using a lower-case or , or an upper-case . The latter form is used to avoid the risk of confusion between the letter l (el) and the numeral 1 (one)
-
In watchmaking, the ligne (a traditional French measure of length still used in the industry) is abbreviated using an upper-case L.
-
In chemistry, L is used as a symbol for the Avogadro constant.
[H. P. Lehmann, X. Fuentes-Arderiu, and L. F. Bertello (1996): "Glossary of terms in quantities and units in Clinical Chemistry (IUPAC-IFCC Recommendations 1996)"; page 963, item " Avogadro constant". Pure and Applied Chemistry, volume 68, issue 4, pages 957–1000. ]
Related characters
Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
-
IPA-specific symbols related to L:
-
IPA superscript symbols related to L:
-
Extensions to IPA for disordered speech (extIPA):
-
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to L:
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: 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
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Ꞁ ꞁ : Turned L was used by William Pryce to designate the Welsh voiced lateral spirant ɬ
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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.
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Other variations are used for phonetic transcription: ᶅ
-
Ꝇ ꝇ : Broken L was used in some medieval Nordic manuscripts
-
Teuthonista phonetic transcription-specific symbols related to L:
-
L with : Ĺ ĺ Ł ł Ľ ľ Ḹ ḹ L̃ l̃ Cedilla Ŀ ŀ Ḷ ḷ Ḻ ḻ Ḽ ḽ Ƚ ƚ Ⱡ ⱡ
Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations
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ℒ 𝓁 : script letter L (uppercase and lowercase, respectively), used in mathematics. (In other contexts, a script typeface (or computer font) should be used.)
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ℓ : mathematical symbol 'ell'; liter (traditional symbol)
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£ : pound sign
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Ꝉ ꝉ : Forms of L were used for medieval scribal abbreviations
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Ł or ł, "L with stroke" used in Polish and many neighbouring languages
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
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𐤋 : Semitic letter Lamedh, from which the following symbols originally derive
Other representations
Computing
The Latin letters and have
Unicode encodings and . These are the same
as those used in
ASCII and ISO 8859. There are also precomposed character encodings for and with diacritics, for most of those listed above; the remainder are produced using combining diacritics.
Variant forms of the letter have unique code points for specialist use: the alphanumeric symbols set in mathematics and science, and halfwidth and fullwidth forms for legacy CJK characters font compatibility.
Other
Notes
External links
