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
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, 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 an ...
, 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
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
). 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 peop ...
, stands for a
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 , ...
sound (
IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners ...
: ). This sound is very common in
place names
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...
in
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
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
Latin Extended Additional is a Unicode block.
The characters in this block are mostly precomposed combinations of Latin letters with one or more general diacritical marks. Ninety of the characters are used in the Vietnamese alphabet
The Vietna ...
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
The Welsh Government ( cy, Llywodraeth Cymru) is the Welsh devolution, devolved government of Wales. The government consists of ministers and Minister (government), deputy ministers, and also of a Counsel General for Wales, counsel general. Minist ...
in 2020.
Romance languages
Catalan
![Barcelona - Estació de Paral·lel (7495657866)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Barcelona_-_Estaci%C3%B3_de_Paral%C2%B7lel_%287495657866%29.jpg)
In
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
, represents the phoneme , as in (language, tongue), (linkage, connection), or (knife).
L with middle dot
In order to not confuse with a
geminated
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
, 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
Latin Extended-A is a Unicode block and is the third block of the Unicode standard. It encodes Latin letters from the Latin ISO character sets other than Latin-1 (which is already encoded in the Latin-1 Supplement block) and also legacy character ...
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
The Royal Spanish Academy ( es, Real Academia Española, generally abbreviated as RAE) is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and is affiliated with ...
).
* This single letter was called pronounced "elye", but often losing the /l/ sound and simplifying to "eh-ye".
* The letter was
collated
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office filin ...
after as a separate entry from 1803 until April 1994 when the X Congress of the
Association of Spanish Language Academies
The Association of Academies of the Spanish Language ( es, Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española, ASALE) is an entity whose end is to work for the unity, integrity, and growth of the Spanish language. It was created in Mexico in 1951 an ...
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
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
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
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
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
''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 ), u ...
. In much of the Spanish-speaking Americas, and in many regions of Spain, is produced (
voiced palatal fricative
The voiced palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that represents this sound is (crossed-tail j), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j\. It is th ...
); 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
Tabasco (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Tabasco ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Tabasco), is one of the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 17 municipalities and its capital city is Villahermosa.
It is located in ...
,
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
, 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
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
and
Uruguay
Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...
, pronounce ll as (
voiced postalveolar fricative
A voiced postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses term ''voiced postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describes the voiced postalveolar ...
) or (
voiceless postalveolar fricative
A voiceless postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiceless postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describes the voiceless ...
).
Philippine languages
While
Philippine languages
The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (languages ...
like
Tagalog 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
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
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
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
.
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
The voiceless alveolar lateral affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is (often simplified to ), and in Americanist phonetic notation it is (barred lambda). T ...
), 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
Eyjafjallajökull (; ), sometimes referred to by the numeronym E15, is one of the smaller ice caps of Iceland, north of Skógar and west of Mýrdalsjökull. The ice cap covers the caldera of a volcano with a summit elevation of . The volcan ...
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
Latin Extended-D is a Unicode block containing Latin characters for phonetic, Mayanist, and Medieval transcription and notation systems. 89 of the characters in this block are for medieval characters proposed by the Medieval Unicode Font Initiati ...
Unicode block at U+A746 (uppercase) and U+A747 (lowercase), displaying as Ꝇ and ꝇ respectively.
Inuit-Yupik languages
![Greenlandic and Faroese Permanent Representation to the EU](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Greenlandic_and_Faroese_Permanent_Representation_to_the_EU.jpg)
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
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...
, 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
Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent consonan ...
.
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 accordin ...
*
Lj (digraph)
Lj (lj in lower case) is a letter present in some Slavic languages, such as the Latin version of Serbo-Croatian and in romanised Macedonian, where it represents a palatal lateral approximant . For example, the word ' is pronounced . Most langua ...
*
Hungarian ly
Ly is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, 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) as the Hungarian ...
References
{{Latin script
Latin-script digraphs