L.L. Winship PEN New England Award
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Ll/ll is a digraph that occurs in several
languages Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...


English

In English, often represents the same sound as single : . The doubling is used to indicate that the preceding vowel is (historically) short, or that the "l" sound is to be extended longer than a single would provide (
etymologically Etymology () The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words ...
, in
latinism A Latinism (from lat-med, Latinismus) is a word, idiom, or structure in a language other than Latin that is derived from, or suggestive of, the Latin language. The Term ''Latinism'' refers to those loan words that are borrowed into another lang ...
s coming from a gemination). It is worth noting that different English language traditions use and in different words: for example the past tense form of "travel" is spelt "" in British English but "" in American English. See also: American and British English spelling differences#Doubled consonants.


Welsh

In
Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...
, stands for a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative sound ( IPA: ). This sound is very common in place names in Wales because it occurs in the word , for example, , where the appears twice, or , where (in the full name) the appears five times – with two instances of . In Welsh, is a separate ''digraph letter'' from (e.g., sorts before ). In modern Welsh this, and other digraph letters, are written with two symbols but count as one letter. In Middle Welsh it was written with a tied ligature; this ligature is included in the Latin Extended Additional Unicode block as and . This ligature is seldom used in Modern Welsh, but equivalent ligatures may be included in modern fonts, for example the three fonts commissioned by the Welsh Government in 2020.


Romance languages


Catalan

In Catalan, represents the phoneme , as in (language, tongue), (linkage, connection), or (knife).


L with middle dot

In order to not confuse with a geminated , Catalan uses a middle dot (
interpunct An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot and centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. (Word-separating spaces did no ...
or in Catalan) in between . For example ("excellent"). The first character in the digraph, and , is included in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block at U+013F (uppercase) and U+140 (lowercase) respectively. In Catalan typography, is intended to fill two spaces, not three, so the interpunct is placed in the narrow space between the two s: and . However, it is common to write and , occupying three spaces. and , although sometimes seen, are incorrect.


Galician

In official Galician spelling the combination stands for the 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 ...
, a palatal counterpart of ).


Spanish

In Spanish, was considered from 1754 to 2010 the fourteenth letter of the
Spanish alphabet Spanish orthography is the orthography used in the Spanish language. The alphabet uses the Latin script. The spelling is fairly phonemic, especially in comparison to more opaque orthographies like English, having a relatively consistent mapping ...
because of its representation of a palatal lateral articulation consonant phoneme (as defined by the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language). * This single letter was called pronounced "elye", but often losing the /l/ sound and simplifying to "eh-ye". * The letter was collated after as a separate entry from 1803 until April 1994 when the X Congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies adopted standard Latin alphabet collation rules. Since then, the digraph has been considered a sequence of two characters. (A similar situation occurred with the Spanish-language digraph ch.) *
Hypercorrection In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a mi ...
leads some to wrongly capitalize as a single letter, as with the Dutch IJ, for example * instead of . In
handwriting Handwriting is the writing done with a writing instrument, such as a pen or pencil, in the hand. Handwriting includes both printing and cursive styles and is separate from formal calligraphy or typeface A typeface (or font family) is ...
, is written as a ligature of two s, with distinct uppercase and lowercase forms. * Today, most Spanish speakers outside Spain pronounce with virtually the same sound as , a phenomenon called yeísmo. In much of the Spanish-speaking Americas, and in many regions of Spain, is produced ( voiced palatal fricative); in
Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
and Tabasco, Mexico, as well as
Rioplatense Rioplatense Spanish (), also known as Rioplatense Castilian, is a variety of Spanish spoken mainly in and around the Río de la Plata Basin of Argentina and Uruguay. It is also referred to as River Plate Spanish or Argentine Spanish. It is the ...
speakers in both Argentina and Uruguay, pronounce ll as ( voiced postalveolar fricative) or ( voiceless postalveolar fricative).


Philippine languages

While Philippine languages like
Tagalog Tagalog may refer to: Language * Tagalog language, a language spoken in the Philippines ** Old Tagalog, an archaic form of the language ** Batangas Tagalog, a dialect of the language * Tagalog script, the writing system historically used for Tagal ...
and Ilocano write or when spelling Spanish loanwords, still survives in proper nouns. However, the pronunciation of is simply rather than . Hence the surnames ''Llamzon'', ''Llamas'', ''Padilla'', ''Bellen'', ''Basallote'' and ''Villanueva'' are respectively pronounced /, , , , and /. Furthermore, in Ilocano represents a geminate
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 eq ...
, like in Italian.


Albanian

In
Albanian Albanian may refer to: *Pertaining to Albania in Southeast Europe; in particular: **Albanians, an ethnic group native to the Balkans **Albanian language **Albanian culture **Demographics of Albania, includes other ethnic groups within the country ...
, stands for the sound , while is pronounced as the ''velarized'' sound .


Icelandic

In Icelandic, the can represent (similar to a voiceless alveolar lateral affricate), or depending on which letters surround it. appears in ("full", masculine), appears in ("full", neuter), and appears in ("full", neuter genitive). The geographical name Eyjafjallajökull includes the sound twice.


Broken L

In
Old Icelandic Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...
, the broken L ligature appears in some instances, such as (field) and (all). It takes the form of a lowercase with the top half shifted to the left, connected to the lower half with a thin horizontal stroke. This ligature is encoded in the Latin Extended-D Unicode block at U+A746 (uppercase) and U+A747 (lowercase), displaying as Ꝇ and ꝇ respectively.


Inuit-Yupik languages

In Central Alaskan Yupʼik and the
Greenlandic language Greenlandic ( kl, kalaallisut, link=no ; da, grønlandsk ) is an Eskimo–Aleut language with about 56,000 speakers, mostly Greenlandic Inuit in Greenland. It is closely related to the Inuit languages in Canada such as Inuktitut. It is the mos ...
, stands for .


Other languages

In the
Gwoyeu Romatzyh Gwoyeu Romatzyh (), abbreviated GR, is a system for writing Mandarin Chinese in the Latin alphabet. The system was conceived by Yuen Ren Chao and developed by a group of linguists including Chao and Lin Yutang from 1925 to 1926. Chao himself lat ...
romanization of Mandarin Chinese, final indicates a falling tone on a syllable ending in , which is otherwise spelled . In
Haida Haida may refer to: Places * Haida, an old name for Nový Bor * Haida Gwaii, meaning "Islands of the People", formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands * Haida Islands, a different archipelago near Bella Bella, British Columbia Ships * , a 1 ...
(Bringhurst orthography), is glottalized .


See also

*
Lh (digraph) This is a list of digraphs used in various Latin alphabets. Capitalisation involves only the first letter (''ch'' becomes ''Ch'') unless otherwise stated (''ij'' becomes ''IJ''). Letters with diacritics are arranged in alphabetic order accordi ...
* Lj (digraph) * Hungarian ly


References

{{Latin script Latin-script digraphs