El (Л л; italics: ''Л'' ''л'') is a letter of the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking c ...

. El commonly represents the

alveolar lateral approximant The voiced alveolar lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral approximants is , and the e ...

. In

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...

it may be either palatalized or slightly

velarized Velarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, velarization is transcribed by one of four d ...

; see

below Below may refer to: *Earth * Ground (disambiguation) *Soil *Floor * Bottom (disambiguation) *Less than *Temperatures below freezing *Hell or underworld People with the surname *Ernst von Below (1863–1955), German World War I general *Fred Below ...

Allography

In some

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

s the Cyrillic letter El has a grapheme which may be confused with the Cyrillic letter Pe (Пп)''.'' Note that Pe has a straight left leg, without the hook. An alternative form of El (Ʌ ʌ) is more common in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian.

History

The Cyrillic letter El was derived from the Greek letter lambda (Λ λ). In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was (''ljudije''), meaning "people". In the

Cyrillic numeral system Cyrillic numerals are a numeral system derived from the Cyrillic script, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the late 10th century. It was used in the First Bulgarian Empire and by South and East Slavic peoples. The system was used in ...

, Л had a value of 30.

Pronunciation

As used in the alphabets of various languages, El represents the following sounds: *

, like the pronunciation of in "lip" * palatalized

velarized alveolar lateral approximant The voiced alveolar lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral approximants is , and the e ...

, like the pronunciation of in "bell" and "milk" *

Labiovelar approximant Labiovelar consonant may refer to: * Labial–velar consonant such as (a consonant made at two places of articulation, one at the lips and the other at the soft palate) * Labialized velar consonant such as or (a consonant with an approximant-lik ...

, like the in "water" * voiced alveolar lateral fricative and its palatalized equivalent The phoneme in Slavic languages has two realizations: hard (, , or , exact pronunciation varies) and soft (pronounced as ) – see palatalization for details. Serbian and Macedonian orthographies use a separate letter Љ for the soft – it looks as a ligature of El with the soft sign (Ь). In these languages, denotes only hard . Pronunciation of hard is sometimes given as , but it is always more velar than in

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

. Slavic languages except Serbian and Macedonian use another orthographic convention to distinguish between hard and soft , so 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 The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is , ...

but has since been replaced by ԓ.

Related letters and other similar characters

*Λ λ : Greek letter Lambda *Љ љ : Cyrillic letter Lje *Ӆ ӆ : Cyrillic letter El with tail *Ԓ ԓ : Cyrillic letter El with hook *Ԯ ԯ : Cyrillic letter El with descender *L l : Latin letter L *Ł ł : Latin letter L with stroke

Allography

History

Pronunciation

Related letters and other similar characters

Computing codes

External links

References