Ḷ (

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

: ḷ) is a letter 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 � ...

, derived from L with a diacritical

dot below When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot refers to the glyphs "combining dot above" (, and "combining dot below" ( which may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in use in a variety of languages. Similar marks are ...

. It has been used in multiple 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 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbo ...

). Among this group of dialectal pronunciations, usually called che vaqueira, can manifest as: 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA ...

, 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 ...

or 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 typ ...

. Formerly, this group of sounds were represented as ''lh'' (in Fernán Coronas'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 from Ancient Greek ('write'), and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other emic units. The study of graphemes ...

is used only in dialectal texts and in toponyms of western

Asturias Asturias (; ; ) officially the Principality of Asturias, is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in northwest Spain. It is coextensive with the provinces of Spain, province of Asturias and contains some of the territory t ...

. Because of the difficulties of writing it in digital texts, non-diacritical l.l (

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

: L.l) is also often used. *In some dialects of the

Iñupiaq language Iñupiaq or Inupiaq ( , ), also known as Iñupiat, Inupiat ( ), Iñupiatun or Alaskan Inuit, is an Inuit language, or perhaps group of languages, spoken by the Iñupiat people in northern and northwestern Alaska, as well as a small adjacent par ...

, a Eskaleut language, it is used to represent the

voiced palatal lateral fricative The voiced palatal lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , though in extIPA is preferred. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol i ...

. It is attested in the Siḷaliñiġmiutun ( North Slope) and Malimiutun (Northwest Arctic) dialects. In these Iñupiaq alphabets, the diacritical dot indicates palatalization; a plain l character is the

voiced alveolar lateral fricative The voiced alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiced dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is (sometime ...

. *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 lat ...

in several modern languages of South Asia when using

ISO 15919 ISO 15919 is an international standard for the romanization of Indic scripts. Published in 2001, it is part of a series of romanization standards by the International Organization for Standardization. Overview Relation to other systems ...

or similar transliteration schemes.

Computer encoding

HTML characters and Unicode code point numbers: * Ḷ: Ḷ or Ḷ – * ḷ: ḷ or ḷ –

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:L-Dot Above Latin letters with diacritics Asturian language ast:Ḷḷ no:Ḷḷ (bokstav)