El (Cyrillic)
| El, людиѥ (Early Cyrillic alphabet) | |
|---|---|
| Л л | |
 | |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Cyrillic |
| Type | Alphabetic |
| Sound values | [l], [lʲ], [w], [ɫ], [ɮ], [ɮʲ] |
| History | |
| Development | Λ λ
|
| Other | |
| Associated numbers | 30 (Cyrillic numerals) |
El (Л л or Ʌ ʌ; italics: Л л or Ʌ ʌ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.
El commonly represents the alveolar lateral approximant /l/. In Slavic languages it may be either palatalized or slightly velarized; see below.
Allography
[edit]In some typefaces the Cyrillic letter El has a grapheme which may be confused with the Cyrillic letter Pe (П п). Note that Pe has a straight left leg, without the hook. An alternative form of El (Ʌ ʌ) is more common in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian.
History
[edit]The Cyrillic letter El was derived from the Greek letter lambda (Λ λ).
In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was людиѥ (ljudije), meaning "people".[1]
In the Cyrillic numeral system, Л had a value of 30.
Forms
[edit]El has two forms: one form resembles Greek capital Lambda (Ʌ ʌ), and the other form resembles the Hebrew letter ת (Л л).
Pronunciation
[edit]As used in the alphabets of various languages, El represents the following sounds:
- alveolar lateral approximant /l/, like the pronunciation of ⟨l⟩ in "lip"
- palatalized alveolar lateral approximant /lʲ/
- velarized alveolar lateral approximant /ɫ/, like the pronunciation of ⟨l⟩ in "bell" and "milk"
- Labiovelar approximant /w/, like the ⟨w⟩ in "water"
- voiced alveolar lateral fricative /ɮ/ and its palatalized equivalent /ɮʲ/
The /l/ phoneme in Slavic languages has two realizations: hard ([l], [ɫ], or [lˠ], exact pronunciation varies) and soft (pronounced as [lʲ]) – see palatalization for details. Serbian and Macedonian orthographies use a separate letter Љ for the soft /l/ – it looks as a ligature of El with the soft sign (Ь). In these languages, ⟨Л⟩ denotes only hard /l/. Pronunciation of hard /l/ is sometimes given as [l], but it is always more velar than [l] in French or German.
Slavic languages except Serbian and Macedonian use another orthographic convention to distinguish between hard and soft /l/, so ⟨Л⟩ can denote either variant depending on the subsequent letter.
The pronunciations shown in the table are the primary ones for each language.
| Language | Position in alphabet |
Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| Belarusian | 13th | /ɫ/, /lʲ/ |
| Bulgarian | 12th | /w~ɫ/, /l/ |
| Kazakh | 16th | /ɫ~l/ |
| Macedonian | 14th | /l/ |
| Mongolian | 13th | /ɮ/, /ɮʲ/ |
| Ossetian | 16th | /ɫ~l/ |
| Russian | 13th | /ɫ/, /lʲ/ |
| Serbian | 13th | /l/ |
| Ukrainian | 16th | /ɫ/, /lʲ/ |
In addition, л was formerly used in Chukchi to represent the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative /ɬ/ but has since been replaced by ԓ.
Related letters and other similar characters
[edit]- Λ λ : Greek letter Lambda
- Љ љ : Cyrillic letter Lje
- Ӆ ӆ : Cyrillic letter El with tail
- Ԓ ԓ : Cyrillic letter El with hook
- Ԯ ԯ : Cyrillic letter El with descender
- L l : Latin letter L
- Ł ł : Latin letter L with stroke
- ת : Hebrew letter Taw
Computing codes
[edit]| Preview | Л | л | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EL | CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EL | ||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 1051 | U+041B | 1083 | U+043B |
| UTF-8 | 208 155 | D0 9B | 208 187 | D0 BB |
| Numeric character reference | Л |
Л |
л |
л |
| Named character reference | Л | л | ||
| KOI8-R and KOI8-U | 236 | EC | 204 | CC |
| Code page 855 | 209 | D1 | 208 | D0 |
| Code page 866 | 139 | 8B | 171 | AB |
| Windows-1251 | 203 | CB | 235 | EB |
| ISO-8859-5 | 187 | BB | 219 | DB |
| Macintosh Cyrillic | 139 | 8B | 235 | EB |
Use in mathematics
[edit]El is sometimes used to represent the Clausen function, and if not, the capital greek letter Lambda is.
External links
[edit]
References
[edit]- ^ Corbett, Professor Greville; Comrie, Professor Bernard (September 2003). The Slavonic Languages. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-86137-6.
