Ly is a digraph of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

, used in Hungarian.

Usage

''Ly'' is the twentieth letter of the

Hungarian alphabet The Hungarian alphabet () is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language. The alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, with several added variations of letters. The alphabet consists of the 26 letters of the ISO b ...

. Its Hungarian name is ''elipszilon'' . Now, it can represent the same phoneme (

palatal approximant The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic n ...

) as the Hungarian letter ''j'', but historically, it represented the different phoneme (

palatal lateral approximant The voiced palatal lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a rotated lowercase letter (not to be confused with lowercas ...

). It is used this way only in Hungarian. In Hungarian, even if two characters are put together to make a different sound, they are considered one letter, and even

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

s keep the letter intact. The combination ''lj'' (considered two separate letters, L and J) is also common in Hungarian and is even pronounced by many speakers. However, even it is sometimes subject to the same reduction to that ''ly'' has been, mainly if it is at the end of a word.

History

Originally, the digraph letter ''ly'' was used to represent the palatal lateral , just as the digraph letter '' ny'' is still used to represent the palatal nasal . However, in the eastern dialects as well as in the standard dialect, the phoneme lost its lateral feature and merged with (akin to Spanish ''

yeísmo ''Yeísmo'' (; literally "Y-ism") is a distinctive feature of certain dialects of the Spanish language, characterized by the loss of the traditional palatal lateral approximant phoneme (written ) and its merger into the phoneme (written ), ...

''). The Hungarian letter ''ly'' came to be pronounced the same as the Hungarian letter ''j''. In the western dialects, lost its palatal feature and merged with (

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 the northern dialects, the phoneme has been preserved. The digraph ''ly'' was also used for the sound in Croatian alphabet before

Gaj's Latin Alphabet Gaj's Latin alphabet ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Gajeva latinica, separator=" / ", Гајева латиница}, ), also known as ( sh-Cyrl, абецеда, ) or ( sh-Cyrl, гајица, link=no, ), is the form of the Latin script used for writing Serb ...

was introduced.Alphabeti Serborum
/ref>

Examples

These examples are Hungarian words that use the letter ly, with the English translation following: * furulya = ''flute'' * amely = ''which'' *helyi = ''local'' *golyó = ''ball'' *lyuk = ''hole'' *kehely = ''goblet'' *folyó = ''river''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ly Latin-script digraphs Hungarian language