El (Cyrillic)
Template:Short description Template:Distinguish Template:Infobox grapheme
El (Л л/Ʌ ʌ; italics: Л л/Ʌ ʌ or Л л/Ʌ ʌ; italics: Л л/Ʌ ʌ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.
El commonly represents the alveolar lateral approximant Template:IPA. In Slavic languages it may be either palatalized or slightly velarized; see below.
History
The Cyrillic letter El was derived from the Greek letter lambda (Λ λ).
In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was Template:Script (ljudije), meaning "people".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
In the Cyrillic numeral system, Л had a value of 30.
Forms
El has two forms: one form resembles Greek capital Lambda (Ʌ ʌ), and the other form resembles the Hebrew letter ת (Л л).
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.
Usage
As used in the alphabets of various languages, El represents the following sounds:
- alveolar lateral approximant Template:IPA, like the pronunciation of Template:Angbr in "lip"
- palatalized alveolar lateral approximant Template:IPA
- velarized alveolar lateral approximant Template:IPA, like the pronunciation of Template:Angbr in "bell" and "milk"
- Labiovelar approximant Template:IPA, like the Template:Angbr in "water"
- voiced alveolar lateral fricative Template:IPA and its palatalized equivalent Template:IPA
The Template:IPA phoneme in Slavic languages has two realizations: hard (Template:IPA, Template:IPAblink, or Template:IPA, exact pronunciation varies) and soft (pronounced as Template:IPA)Template:Sndsee palatalization for details. Serbian and Macedonian orthographies use a separate letter Љ for the soft Template:IPATemplate:Sndit looks as a ligature of El with the soft sign (Ь). In these languages, Template:Angbr denotes only hard Template:IPA. Pronunciation of hard Template:IPA is sometimes given as Template:IPA, but it is always more velar than Template:IPA in French or German.
Slavic languages except Serbian and Macedonian use another orthographic convention to distinguish between hard and soft Template:IPA, so Template:Angbr can denote either variant depending on the subsequent letter.
The pronunciations shown in the table are the primary ones for each language.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
| Language | Position in alphabet |
Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| Belarusian | 13th | Template:IPA |
| Bulgarian | 12th | Template:IPA |
| Kazakh | 16th | Template:IPA |
| Macedonian | 14th | Template:IPA |
| Mongolian | 13th | Template:IPA |
| Ossetian | 16th | Template:IPA |
| Russian | 13th | Template:IPA |
| Serbian | 13th | Template:IPA |
| Ukrainian | 16th | Template:IPA |
In addition, л was formerly used in Chukchi to represent the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative Template:IPA but has since been replaced by ԓ.
Use in mathematics
El is sometimes used to represent the Clausen function, and if not, the capital greek letter Lambda is.
Related letters and other similar characters
- 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