El (Cyrillic)

Numeric value: 30
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
АБВГҐДЂ
ЃЕЀЁЄЖЗ
З́ЅИЍІЇЙ
ЈКЛЉМНЊ
ОПРСС́ТЋ
ЌУЎФХЦЧ
ЏШЩЪЫЬЭ
ЮЯ
Non-Slavic letters
ӐА̄А̊А̃ӒӒ̄Ә
Ә́Ә̃ӚӔҒГ̧Г̑
Г̄ҔӺӶԀԂ
ԪԬӖЕ̄Е̃
Ё̄Є̈ӁҖӜԄ
ҘӞԐԐ̈ӠԆӢ
И̃ҊӤҚӃҠҞ
ҜԞԚӅԮԒԠ
ԈԔӍӉҢԨӇ
ҤԢԊО̆О̃О̄Ӧ
ӨӨ̄ӪҨԤҦР̌
ҎԖҪԌҬ
ԎУ̃ӮӰӰ́Ӳ
ҮҮ́ҰХ̑ҲӼӾ
ҺҺ̈ԦҴҶ
ӴӋҸҼ
ҾЫ̆Ы̄ӸҌЭ̆Э̄
Э̇ӬӬ́Ӭ̄Ю̆Ю̈Ю̈́
Ю̄Я̆Я̄Я̈ԘԜӀ
Archaic letters
ҀѺ
ОУѠѼѾ
ѢѤѦ
ѪѨѬѮ
ѰѲѴѶ

El л; italics: Л л) 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

In some typefaces the Cyrillic letter El has a grapheme which may be confused with the Cyrillic letter Pe п; italics: П п). Note that Pe has a straight left leg, without the hook. An alternative form of the letter El (Л л; italics: Л л) closely resembles the Greek letter lambda (Λ). This form is more common in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia.

History

The Cyrillic letter El was derived from the Greek letter lambda λ).

In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was людиѥ (ljudije), meaning "people".

In the Cyrillic numeral system, El had a value of 30.

Pronunciation

As used in the alphabets of various languages, El represents the following sounds:

The /l/ phoneme in Slavic languages has two realizations: hard ([l], [ɫ], or [], 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 /l/, /lʲ/
Bulgarian 12th /l~ɫ/, /lʲ/
Macedonian 14th /l/
Mongolian 13th /ɮ/, /ɮʲ/
Russian 13th /l/, /lʲ/
Serbian 13th /l/
Ukrainian 16th /l/, /lʲ/

In addition, л was formerly used in Chukchi to represent the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative /l/ but has since been replaced by ԓ.

Related letters and other similar characters

Computing codes

Character Л л
Unicode name CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EL CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EL
Encodings decimal hex decimal 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
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

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/15/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.