L

This article is about the letter of the alphabet. For other uses, see L (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with ǀ.

L
L l
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and logographic
Language of origin	Latin language
Sound values	[ l ] [ ɫ ] [ ɮ ] [ ɬ ] [ ʎ ] [ ɭ ] [ w ] [ ʟ ] /ɛl/
In  Unicode	U+004C, U+006C
Alphabetical position	12
History
Development	Λ λ 𐌋 L l
Time period	~−700 to present
Descendants	ɮ Ꝇ ꝇ ℒ ℓ £ Ł ᛚ ꬸ L
Sisters	Л Љ Ӆ Ԯ ל ل ܠ ⵍ ࠋ 𐡋 ለ ℓ
Other
Associated graphs	l(x), lj, ll, ly
Writing direction	Left-to-right
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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

Lamedh may have come from a pictogram of an ox goad or cattle prod. Some have suggested that is represents a shepherd's staff. ^[2]

Typographic variants

"ℓ" redirects here. For the azimuthal quantum number, see Azimuthal quantum number.

In most sans-serif typefaces, the lowercase letter ell⟨l⟩, written l, may be difficult to distinguish from the uppercase letter "eye" ⟨ I ⟩; in some serif typefaces, the glyph l may be confused with the glyph 1, 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. In the blackletter type used in England until the seventeenth century, ^{[3] [lower-alpha 1]} the letter L is written as the render ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {L}}}$.

Another means of reducing such confusion is to use symbol ℓ, which is a cursive, handwriting-style lowercase form of the letter "ell"; this form is seen in European road signs and advertisements. In Japan, for example, this is the symbol for the liter. (The International Committee for Weights and Measures recommends using L or l for the liter, ^[4] without specifying a typeface.) In Unicode, the cursive form is encoded as U+2113ℓSCRIPT SMALL L from the "letter-like symbols" block. Unicode encodes an explicit symbol as U+1D4C1𝓁MATHEMATICAL SCRIPT SMALL L. ^[5] The TeX syntax <math>\ell</math> renders it as ${\displaystyle \ell }$. In mathematical formulas, an italic form (ℓ) of the script ℓ is the norm. Sometimes seen in Web typography, a serif font for the lowercase letter ell, such as l, in otherwise sans-serif text was used.

Use in writing systems

Pronunciation of ⟨l⟩ by language

Orthography	Phonemes
Standard Chinese (Pinyin)	/l/
English	/l/, silent
French	/l/, silent
German	/l/
Portuguese	/l/
Spanish	/l/
Turkish	/l/, /ɫ/

English

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

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 voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (IPA [ɬ]) in Welsh, where it can appear in an initial position. In Spanish, ⟨ll⟩ represents /ʎ/ ([ʎ], [j], [ʝ], [ɟʝ], or [ʃ], depending on dialect).

A palatal lateral approximant or palatal ⟨l⟩ (IPA [ʎ]) occurs in many languages, and is represented by ⟨gli⟩ in Italian, ⟨ll⟩ in Spanish and Catalan, ⟨lh⟩ in Portuguese, and ⟨ļ⟩ in Latvian.

In Turkish, ⟨l⟩ generally represents /l/, but represents /ɫ/ before ⟨a⟩, ⟨ı⟩, ⟨o⟩, or ⟨u⟩.

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 International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨l⟩ to represent the voiced alveolar lateral approximant and a small cap ⟨ʟ⟩ to represent the voiced velar lateral approximant.

Other uses

Main article: L (disambiguation)

• 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 italicised), l, was more often seen. ^{[lower-alpha 2]}
• The Roman numeral L represents the number 50. ^[7]
• In the International system of units, the liter (or litre) is abbreviated using an upper-case (or a lower-case) L. ^[4]
• 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

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

• IPA-specific symbols related to L: ʟ ɫ ɬ ɭ ɺ ɮ ꞎ ˡ
• IPA superscript symbols related to L: ^[10] 𐞛 𐞜
• Extensions to IPA for disordered speech (extIPA): ^{[11] [12]} 𝼄 𐞝
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to L: ^[13]
  • U+1D0CᴌLATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL L WITH STROKE
  • U+1D38ᴸMODIFIER 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+A780ꞀLATIN CAPITAL LETTER TURNED L and U+A781ꞁLATIN 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: ᶅ ^[18] ᶩ ^[18] ᶪ ^[18] ᶫ ^[18] 𝼑 ^{[19] [12]} 𝼓 ^{[19] [12]}
• Ꝇ ꝇ : Broken L was used in some medieval Nordic manuscripts ^[20]
• Teuthonista phonetic transcription-specific symbols related to L: ^[21]
  • U+AB37ꬷLATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH INVERTED LAZY S
  • U+AB38ꬸLATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH DOUBLE MIDDLE TILDE
  • U+AB39ꬹLATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH MIDDLE RING
  • U+AB5DꭝMODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH INVERTED LAZY S
  • U+AB5EꭞMODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH MIDDLE TILDE
• 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 ^[22]
• Ł or ł, "L with stroke" used in Polish and many neighbouring languages

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

• 𐤋 : 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

Other representations

Computing

Character information

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

¹Also 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

1. Blackletter persisted in Germany until the early 1940s. See Antiqua–Fraktur dispute
2. For example, see the Diary of Samuel Pepys for 31 December 1661: " I suppose myself to be worth about 500l. clear in the world, ..." ^[6]

References

1. "L" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989) Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged. (1993); "el", "ells", op. cit.
2. "Ancient Hebrew Research Center". Archived from the original on January 3, 2015. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
3. 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.
4. "The International System of Units (SI) | The SI brochure, 9th edition, 2019" (PDF). December 2022. Retrieved July 23, 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).
5. The Unicode Standard, Version 15.0, Chapter 22
6. Pepys, Samuel (December 31, 2004). "Tuesday 31 December 1661". The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Archived from the original on November 24, 2021.
7. Gordon, Arthur E. (1983). Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy . University of California Press. pp.  44. ISBN   9780520038981 . Retrieved October 3, 2015. roman numerals.
8. "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 January 21, 2022. Retrieved January 18, 2022. 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]
9. 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. doi : 10.1351/pac199668040957
10. Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (November 8, 2020). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic" (PDF).
11. Miller, Kirk; Ball, Martin (July 11, 2020). "L2/20-116R: Expansion of the extIPA and VoQS" (PDF).
12. Anderson, Deborah (December 7, 2020). "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).
13. Everson, Michael; et al. (March 20, 2002). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
14. Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (January 27, 2009). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF).
15. Cook, Richard; Everson, Michael (September 20, 2001). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
16. Everson, Michael (August 6, 2006). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS" (PDF).
17. Miller, Kirk; Rees, Neil (July 16, 2021). "L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam" (PDF).
18. Constable, Peter (April 19, 2004). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
19. Miller, Kirk (July 11, 2020). "L2/20-125R: Unicode request for expected IPA retroflex letters and similar letters with hooks" (PDF).
20. Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (January 30, 2006). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF).
21. Everson, Michael; Dicklberger, Alois; Pentzlin, Karl; Wandl-Vogt, Eveline (June 2, 2011). "L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF).
22. Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (January 30, 2006). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF).

External links

• Media related to L at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of L at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of l at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of ℓ at Wiktionary