Ḷ (

minuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...

: ḷ) is a letter 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 th ...

, derived from L with a diacritical dot below. It is or was used in some languages to represent various sounds. *In Asturian, a digraph (Ḷḷ, lower case: ḷḷ) is used to represent some western dialectal phonemes corresponding to standard ll (representing a palatal lateral approximant ). Among this group of dialectal pronunciations, usually called che vaqueira, can appear basically: a

voiced retroflex plosive The voiced retroflex plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is d`. Like all the retroflex ...

, a

voiced retroflex affricate The voiced retroflex sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , sometimes simplified to or . It occurs in such language ...

, a

voiceless retroflex affricate The voiceless retroflex sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , sometimes simplified to or , and the equivalent X-SAMPA ...

and a

voiceless alveolar affricate A voiceless alveolar affricate is a type of affricate consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are several ty ...

. Formerly, this group of sounds were represented as ''lh'' (in

Fernán Coronas Fernan or Fernán is both a given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include: * Fernán Blázquez de Cáceres, Spanish nobleman * Fernán Caballero (1796–1877), Spanish novelist * Fernando Fernán Gómez (1921–2007), Spanish actor ...

's proposed writing system), ''ts'' or ''ŝ''. However, this

grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called '' graphemi ...

is used only in dialectal texts and in

toponyms 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 ...

of western

Asturias Asturias (, ; ast, Asturies ), officially the Principality of Asturias ( es, Principado de Asturias; ast, Principáu d'Asturies; Galician-Asturian: ''Principao d'Asturias''), is an autonomous community in northwest Spain. It is coextensiv ...

. Because of the difficulties of writing it in digital texts, non-diacritical l.l ( majuscule: L.l) is also often used.''Normes Ortográfiques''
paragraph 1.1.3.1 (p.14). In the

International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...

, ḷ is used to represent vocalic . It is used to represent a

retroflex lateral approximant The voiced retroflex 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is l`. The retroflex late ...

/ɭ/ in several modern language of South Asia when using ISO 15919 or similar transliteration schemes. It is used to represent a

voiced 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 ...

�in Iñupiaq.

Computer encoding

HTML characters and Unicode code point numbers: * Ḷ: Ḷ or Ḷ – - Latin capital letter L with dot below * ḷ: ḷ or ḷ – - Latin small letter L with dot below

References

Latin letters with diacritics Asturian language ast:Ḷḷ no:Ḷḷ (bokstav) {{Latin-script-stub