Ly is a digraph of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

, used in Hungarian.

Usage

''Ly'' is the twentieth letter of the Hungarian alphabet. Its Hungarian name is ''elipszilon'' . Now, it can represent the same phoneme (

palatal approximant The voiced palatal approximant 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 notation i ...

) as the Hungarian letter ''j'', but historically, it represented the different phoneme ( palatal lateral approximant). 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 type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

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''). 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). 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 ( sr-Cyrl, абецеда, ) or ( sr-Cyrl, гајица, link=no, ), is the form of the Latin script used for writing all ...

was introduced.Alphabeti Serborum
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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