Numeric value: 30 | ||
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El (Л л; italics: Л л) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.
Contents
El commonly represents the alveolar lateral approximant /l/. In Slavic languages it may be either palatalized or slightly velarized; see below.
Allography
In some typefaces the Cyrillic letter El has a grapheme which may be confused with the Cyrillic letter Pe (П п; italics: П п). Note that Pe has a straight left leg, without the hook. An alternative form of the letter El (Л л; italics: Л л) closely resembles the Greek letter lambda (Λ). This form is more common in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia.
History
The Cyrillic letter El was derived from the Greek letter lambda (Λ λ).
In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was людиѥ (ljudije), meaning "people".
In the Cyrillic numeral system, El had a value of 30.
Pronunciation
As used in the alphabets of various languages, El represents the following sounds:
The /l/ phoneme in Slavic languages has two realizations: hard ([l], [ɫ], or [lˠ], exact pronunciation varies) and soft (pronounced as [lʲ]) – see palatalization for details. Serbian and Macedonian orthographies use a separate letter Љ for the soft /l/ – it looks as a ligature of El with the soft sign (Ь). In these languages, ⟨Л⟩ denotes only hard /l/. Pronunciation of hard /l/ is sometimes given as [l], but it is always more velar than [l] in French or German.
Slavic languages except Serbian and Macedonian use another orthographic convention to distinguish between hard and soft /l/, so ⟨Л⟩ can denote either variant depending on the subsequent letter.
The pronunciations shown in the table are the primary ones for each language.
In addition, л was formerly used in Chukchi to represent the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative /ɬ/ but has since been replaced by ԓ.