L
L | |
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L l | |
Usage | |
Writing system | ]
[ ለ ℓ |
Other | |
Other letters commonly used with | l(x), lj, ll, ly |
Writing direction | Left-to-right |
ISO basic Latin alphabet |
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AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz |
L, or l, is the twelfth letter of 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 /ˈɛl/ EL), plural els.[1]
History
Egyptian hieroglyph
|
Phoenician lamedh |
Western Greek Lambda |
Etruscan L |
Latin L | ||
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|
Lamedh may have come from a pictogram of an ox goad or cattle prod. Some have suggested a shepherd's staff.[2]
Typographic variants
In most
Another means of reducing such confusion is to use symbol ℓ, which is a
Sometimes seen in Web typography, a serif font for the lowercase letter ell, such as l, in otherwise sans-serif text was used.
In the blackletter type used in England until the seventeenth century,[5][a] the letter L is rendered as .
Use in writing systems
Languages in italics are not usually written using the Latin alphabet | ||||
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Language | Dialect(s) | Pronunciation (IPA) | Environment | Notes |
Mandarin Chinese | Standard | / l /
|
Pinyin romanization | |
English | / l / or silent
|
See English orthography | ||
French | / l / or silent
|
See French orthography | ||
German | / l /
|
|||
Portuguese | / l /
|
|||
Spanish | / l /
|
|||
Turkish | / l /
|
Except before ⟨a⟩, ⟨ı⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ | See Turkish alphabet | |
/ ɫ /
|
Before ⟨a⟩, ⟨ı⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ |
English
In
In English orthography, ⟨l⟩ 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
⟨l⟩ usually represents the sound [l] or some other lateral consonant.
Common digraphs include ⟨ll⟩, which has a value identical to ⟨l⟩ in English, but has the separate value
A
In Washo, lower-case ⟨l⟩ represents a typical [l] sound, while upper-case ⟨L⟩ represents a voiceless [l̥] sound, a bit like double ⟨ll⟩ in Welsh.
Other systems
The
Other uses
- The capital letter L is used as the italicised), l, was more often seen.[b]
- The
- In the liter (or litre) is abbreviated using an upper-case (or a lower-case) L.[3]
- In watchmaking, the ligne (a traditional French measure of length still used in the industry) is abbreviated using an upper-case L.[8]
- In chemistry, L is used as a symbol for the Avogadro constant.[9]
Related characters
- 𐞜
- 𐞝
- Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to L:[13] U+1D0C ᴌ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL L WITH STROKE and U+1D38 ᴸ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL L
- ₗ : Subscript small l was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902[14]
- ȴ : L with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics[15]
- Ꞁ ꞁ : Turned L was used by William Pryce to designate the Welsh voiced lateral spirant [ɬ][16] The lower case is also used in the Romic alphabet. In Unicode, these are U+A780 Ꞁ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER TURNED L, and U+A781 ꞁ LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED L.
- 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.[17]
- Other variations are used for phonetic transcription:
- Ꝇ ꝇ : Broken L was used in some medieval Nordic manuscripts[20]
- Teuthonista phonetic transcription-specific symbols related to L:[21]
- U+AB37 ꬷ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH INVERTED LAZY S
- U+AB38 ꬸ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH DOUBLE MIDDLE TILDE
- U+AB39 ꬹ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH MIDDLE RING
- U+AB5D ꭝ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH INVERTED LAZY S
- U+AB5E ꭞ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH MIDDLE TILDE
- L with 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[22]
- Ł or ł, "L with stroke" used in Polish and many neighbouring languages
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
Other representations
Computing
Preview | L | l | L | l | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L | LATIN SMALL LETTER L | FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L | FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER L | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 76 | U+004C | 108 | U+006C | 65324 | U+FF2C | 65356 | U+FF4C |
UTF-8 | 76 | 4C | 108 | 6C | 239 188 172 | EF BC AC | 239 189 140 | EF BD 8C |
Numeric character reference | L |
L |
l |
l |
L |
L |
l |
l |
EBCDIC family | 211 | D3 | 147 | 93 | ||||
ASCII 1 | 76 | 4C | 108 | 6C |
- 1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other
NATO phonetic
|
Morse code |
Lima |
ⓘ |
Signal flag | Flag semaphore | American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling) | British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling )
|
Braille dots-123 Unified English Braille |
Notes
- ^ Blackletter persisted in Germany until the early 1940s. See Antiqua–Fraktur dispute
- Diary of Samuel Pepys for 31 December 1661: " I suppose myself to be worth about 500l. clear in the world, ..."[6]
References
- ^ "L" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989) Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged. (1993); "el", "ells", op. cit.
- ^ "Ancient Hebrew Research Center". Archived from the original on 3 January 2015. Retrieved 12 January 2015.
- ^ a b "The International System of Units (SI) | The SI brochure, 9th edition, 2019" (PDF). December 2022. Retrieved 23 July 2023.
The litre, and the symbol lower-case l, were adopted by the CIPM in 1879 (PV, 1879, 41). The alternative symbol, capital L, was adopted by the 16th CGPM (1979, Resolution 6; CR, 101 and Metrologia, 1980, 16, 56-57) in order to avoid the risk of confusion between the letter l (el) and the numeral 1 (one).
- ^ The Unicode Standard, Version 15.0, Chapter 22
- ^ Dowding, Geoffrey (1962). An introduction to the history of printing types; an illustrated summary of main stages in the development of type design from 1440 up to the present day: an aid to type face identification. Clerkenwell [London]: Wace. p. 5.
- ^ Pepys, Samuel (31 December 2004). "Tuesday 31 December 1661". The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Archived from the original on 24 November 2021.
- ISBN 9780520038981. Retrieved 3 October 2015.
roman numerals.
- ^ "Foire aux questions sur l'horlogerie et les montres" [Frequently asked questions about watches and clocks]. horlogerie-suisse.com (in French). Archived from the original on 2022-01-21. Retrieved 2022-01-18.
Par tradition ancestrale, les horlogers n'utilisent pas le millimètre mais la ligne pour désigner le diamètre d'encageage d'un mouvement.
[By ancestral tradition, watchmakers do not use the millimeter but the line to designate the casing diameter of a movement] - ^ Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (2020-11-08). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic" (PDF).
- ^ Miller, Kirk; Ball, Martin (2020-07-11). "L2/20-116R: Expansion of the extIPA and VoQS" (PDF).
- ^ a b c Anderson, Deborah (2020-12-07). "L2/21-021: Reference doc numbers for L2/20-266R "Consolidated code chart of proposed phonetic characters" and IPA etc. code point and name changes" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF).
- ^ Cook, Richard; Everson, Michael (2001-09-20). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael (2006-08-06). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Miller, Kirk; Rees, Neil (2021-07-16). "L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam" (PDF).
- ^ a b c d Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ a b Miller, Kirk (2020-07-11). "L2/20-125R: Unicode request for expected IPA retroflex letters and similar letters with hooks" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael; Dicklberger, Alois; Pentzlin, Karl; Wandl-Vogt, Eveline (2011-06-02). "L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF).