Ł Explained

Letter:Ł ł
L with stroke
Script:Latin
Language:Polish
Phonemes:[{{IPAlink|w}}]
Unicode:U+0141, U+0142
Equivalents:w
Direction:Left to right
Fam1:U20
Fam2:S39
Fam7:Λ λ
Fam9:L l
Type:alphabet
Typedesc:ic

Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Belarusian Latin, Ukrainian Latin, Wymysorys, Navajo, Dëne Sųłıné, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, Sm'álgyax, Nisga'a, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai script. In some Slavic languages, it represents the continuation of the Proto-Slavic non-palatal (L) (dark L), except in Polish, Kashubian, and Sorbian, where it evolved further into pronounced as //w//. In most non-European languages, it represents a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative or similar sound.

Glyph shape Ł

In normal typefaces, the letter has a stroke approximately in the middle of the vertical stem, crossing it at an angle between 70° and 45°, never horizontally. In cursive handwriting and typefaces that imitate it, the capital letter has a horizontal stroke through the middle and looks very similar to the pound sign . In the cursive lowercase letter, the stroke is also horizontal and placed on top of the letter instead of going through the middle of the stem, which would not be distinguishable from the letter t. The stroke is either straight or slightly wavy, depending on the style. Unlike (l), the letter (ł) is usually written without a noticeable loop at the top. Most publicly available multilingual cursive typefaces, including commercial ones, feature an incorrect glyph for (ł).[1]

A rare variant of the ł glyph is a cursive double-ł ligature, used in words such as Polish: [[Władysław II Jagiełło|Jagiełło]], Polish: [[Radziwiłł family|Radziwiłł]] or Polish: Ałłach (archaic: Allah), where the strokes at the top of the letters are joined into a single stroke.

Polish Ł

In Polish, (Ł) is used to distinguish the historical dark (velarized) L [ɫ] from clear L [l]. The Polish (Ł) now sounds the same as the English (W), [w] as in water (except for older speakers in some eastern dialects where it still sounds velarized).

In 1440, proposed a letter resembling

 \ell

to represent clear L. For dark L he suggested "l" with a stroke running in the opposite direction to the modern version. The latter was introduced in 1514–1515 by Stanisław Zaborowski in his Latin: Orthographia seu modus recte scribendi et legendi Polonicum idioma quam utilissimus. L with stroke originally represented a velarized alveolar lateral approximant pronounced as /[ɫ]/,[2] a pronunciation that is preserved in the eastern part of Poland[3] and among the Polish minority in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. This pronunciation is similar to Russian unpalatalised (Л) in native words and grammar forms.

In modern Polish, Ł is usually pronounced pronounced as //w// (as [w] in English wet).[4] This pronunciation first appeared among Polish lower classes in the 16th century. It was considered an uncultured accent by the upper classes (who pronounced (Ł) as pronounced as //ɫ//) until the mid-20th century, when this distinction gradually began to fade.

The shift from pronounced as /[ɫ]/ to pronounced as /[w]/ in Polish has affected all instances of dark L, even word-initially or intervocalically, e.g. ładny ("pretty, nice") is pronounced pronounced as /[ˈwadnɨ]/, słowo ("word") is pronounced as /[ˈswɔvɔ]/, and ciało ("body") is pronounced as /[ˈtɕawɔ]/. Ł often alternates with clear L, such as the plural forms of adjectives and verbs in the past tense that are associated with masculine personal nouns, e.g. mały → mali (pronounced as /[ˈmawɨ]/ → pronounced as /[ˈmali]/). Alternation is also common in declension of nouns, e.g. from nominative to locative, tło → na tle (pronounced as /[twɔ]/ → pronounced as /[naˈtlɛ]/).

Polish final Ł also often corresponds to Ukrainian word-final (В) Ve (Cyrillic) and Belarusian (Ў) Short U (Cyrillic). Thus, "he gave" is "dał" in Polish, "дав" in Ukrainian, "даў" in Belarusian (all pronounced pronounced as /[daw]/), but "дал" pronounced as /[daɫ]/ in Russian.

Examples

Notable figures

Some examples of words with 'ł':

In contexts where Ł is not readily available as a glyph, basic L is used instead. Thus, the surname Małecki would be spelled Malecki in a foreign country.

In the 1980s, when some computers available in Poland lacked Polish diacritics, it was common practice to use a pound sterling sign (£) for Ł. This practice ceased as soon as DOS-based and Mac computers came with a code page for such characters.

Other languages

In Belarusian Łacinka (both in the 1929[5] and 1962[6] [7] versions), (Ł) corresponds to Cyrillic (Л) (El), and is normally pronounced pronounced as //ɫ// (almost exactly as in English pull).

In Navajo and Elaponke, (Ł) is used for a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative pronounced as //ɬ//, like the Welsh double L.[8] [9]

(Ł) is used in orthographic transcription of Ahtna, an Athabaskan language spoken in Alaska; it represents a breathy lateral fricative.[10] [11] It is also used in Tanacross, a related Athabaskan language.[12]

When transcribing Armenian into the Latin alphabet, (Ł) may be used to write the letter (Ղ) pronounced as //ʁ//, for example Ղուկաս => Łukas. In Classical Armenian, (Ղ) was pronounced as pronounced as //ɫ//, which morphed into pronounced as //ʁ// in both standard varieties of modern Armenian. Other transcriptions of (Ղ) include (Ṙ), (Ġ) or (Gh).

See also

References

  1. Web site: Adam Twardoch . Adam Twardoch . 2009-03-09 . Kreska ukośna . 2015-10-01 . Polish Diacritics: how to?.
  2. Book: Teslar . Joseph Andrew . A New Polish Grammar . Teslar . Jadwiga . Oliver & Boyd . 1962 . 8th Edition, Revised . Edinburgh . 4–5 . "ł = English l hard, dental ; ... It is true, of course, that the majority of Poles nowadays pronounce this sound with the lips, like the English w. But this is a careless pronunciation leading eventually to the disappearance of a sound typically Polish (and Russian also ; it has already disappeared from the other Slavonic languages, Czech and Serbian) ... In articulating l, your tongue ... projects considerably beyond the horizontal line separating the gums from the teeth and touches the gums or the palate. To pronounce ł ... the tongue should be held flat and rigid in the bottom of the mouth with the tip just bent upwards sufficiently to touch the edge of the front upper teeth. (On no account should the tongue extend beyond the line separating the teeth from the gums.) Holding the tongue rigidly in this position, a speaker should then pronounce one of the vowels a, o or u, consciously dropping the tongue on each occasion, to obtain the hard ł quite distinct from the soft l.".
  3. Book: Swan . Oscar E. . First Year Polish . Slavica Publishers . 1983 . 2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded . Columbus . xix . "ł (so-called barrel l) is not pronounced like an l except in Eastern dialects and, increasingly infrequently, in stage pronunciation. It is most often pronounced like English w in way, how. "łeb, dała, był, piłka.".
  4. Book: Mazur . B. W. . Colloquial Polish . Routledge . 1983 . London . 5 . "The sounds below exist in English but are pronounced or rendered differently: c ... h[, ] ch ... j ... ł as w in wet[, ] łach ład słowo[; ] r ... w".
  5. Book: Тарашкевіч, Б. . Беларуская граматыка для школ. – Вільня . Беларуская друкарня ім. Фр. Скарыны, 1929 ; Мн. : «Народная асвета» . 1991 . Выданьне пятае пераробленае і пашыранае.
  6. Book: Станкевіч, Ян . Які мае быць парадак літараў беларускае абэцады . 1962.
  7. Book: Станкевіч, Ян . Збор твораў у двух тамах . Энцыклапедыкс . 2002 . 985-6599-46-6 . 2.
  8. Book: Campbell, George L. . Concise Compendium of the World's Languages . Routledge . 1995 . London . 354.
  9. Web site: McKnight . Roberta . January 2001 . The Creek Way . 21 May 2022 . ANT 3640 Language & Culture . Florida Gulf Coast University.
  10. Web site: Ahtna Pronunciation Guide . 2008-10-05 . Native Languages of the Americas.
  11. Web site: Tuttle . Siri G. . Syllabic obstruents in Ahtna Athabaskan . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20070623073728/http://email.eva.mpg.de/rara2006/abstracts_webpage/TUTTLE.pdf . June 23, 2007 . 2008-10-05.
  12. Web site: Holton . Gary . April 2004 . Writing Tanacross Without Special Fonts . 2008-10-05 . Alaska Native Language Center.
  13. Web site: Unicode Character 'LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH STROKE' (U+0142) . 2007-12-20 . FileFormat.info.

External links

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