Lambda (Ꟛ, ꟛ) is an additional letter of the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

, based on the lowercase letter

lambda Lambda (; uppercase , lowercase ; , ''lám(b)da'') is the eleventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiced alveolar lateral approximant . In the system of Greek numerals, lambda has a value of 30. Lambda is derived from the Phoen ...

from the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

(λ). It is used in

Heiltsuk The Heiltsuk , sometimes historically referred to as ''Bella Bella'', or ''Híɫzaqv'' are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous people of the Central Coast Regional District, Central Coast region in British Columbia, ...

Liqʼwala Liqʼwala (also rendered and Lik'wala) is an endangered dialect of Kwakʼwala spoken by the Laich-kwil-tach people of Vancouver Island, Vancouver Island, British Columbia. In 2017, according to Laurie Lewis of the Liqʼwala Language Revitalizat ...

Kwakʼwala Kwakʼwala or Kwak̓wala (), previously known as Kwakiutl (), is a Wakashan language spoken by about 450 Kwakwakaʼwakw people around Queen Charlotte Strait in Western Canada. It has shared considerable influence with other languages of the ...

, and

Pilagá fThe Pilagá (in Pilagá language, Pilagá language: ''pit'laxá'') are an Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous people of the Guaycuru peoples, Guaycuru group that inhabits the center of the province of Formosa Province, Formosa, in Arge ...

. In these languages, Latin lambda represents a variety of

lateral Lateral is a geometric term of location which may also refer to: Biology and healthcare * Lateral (anatomy), a term of location meaning "towards the side" * Lateral cricoarytenoid muscle, an intrinsic muscle of the larynx * Lateral release ( ...

phonemes A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

. The lower-case variant is a

homoglyph In orthography and typography, a homoglyph is one of two or more graphemes, character (computing), characters, or glyphs with shapes that appear identical or very similar but may have differing meaning. The designation is also applied to sequence ...

of lower-case

. The upper-case is a large variant of the lower case in Pilagá but a turned Y in North America.

Usage

The letter appears in the

dialect of

language, where it represents . In

, Latin lambda may also be used instead of the digraph . In the

Heiltsuk dialect Heiltsuk , ''Híɫzaqv'', also known as Bella Bella and Haihais, is a dialect of the North Wakashan (Kwakiutlan) language Heiltsuk-Oowekyala that is spoken by the Haihai ( Xai'xais) and Bella Bella First Nations peoples of the Central Coast reg ...

of North

Wakashan Wakashan is a family of languages spoken in British Columbia around and on Vancouver Island, and in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. As is typical of the Nor ...

, Latin lambda represents and may be alternatively rendered as . In the

Pilagá language Pilagá is a Guaicuruan languages, Guaicuruan language spoken by 4,000 :es:Pilagá, people in the Bermejo River, Bermejo and Pilcomayo River valleys, western Formosa Province, in northeastern Argentina. Sociocultural context The geographical di ...

, Latin lambda is used to represent . Unicode support was assigned to U+A7DA and U+A7DB in September 2024.

Encodings

Gallery

File:Lambda (latin).png, alt=Lambda latin letter (Ꟛ, ꟛ) example., An example for the Lambda (latin) letter by the

Times New Roman Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned for use by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931. It has become one of the most popular typefaces of all time and is installed on most personal computers. The typeface was conceived by Stanl ...

References

L, Lambda, Latin {{Latin-script-stub