L
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L is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is el /ɛl/.
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History
The letter L is derived ultimately from the Semitic (crook/goad) which stood for /l/. This originally may have been based on an Egyptian hieroglyph that was adapted by Semites for alphabetic purposes. The Greek letter Lambda Λ (upper case) or λ (lower case), as well as the equivalent Etruscan and Latin letters, represent the same sound as the Semitic letter. In reference, it is spelled el or ell.
| Egyptian hieroglyph `wt | Proto-Semitic L | Phoenician L | Etruscan L | Greek Lambda | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Pronunciation
In English, L can have several values, depending on whether it occurs before or after a vowel. The alveolar lateral approximant (the sound which the IPA uses the lowercase [l] to represent) occurs before a vowel, as in lip or please, while the velarized alveolar lateral approximant (IPA [ɫ]) occurs in bell and milk (see Dark L). This velarization does not occur in many European languages that use L; it is also a factor making the pronunciation of L difficult for users of languages that either lack, or have different values, for L, such as Japanese or Chinese. In English, L is often silent in such words as walk or calm.
L can occur before almost any plosive, fricative, or affricate in English. Common digraphs include LL, which has a value identical to L in English, but has the separate value voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (IPA /ɬ/) in Welsh, where it can appear in an initial position.
A palatal L (IPA /ʎ/) occurs in many languages, and is represented by GL in Italian, LL in certain varieties of Spanish, LH in Portuguese, and Ļ in Latvian.
Codes for computing
| NATO phonetic | Morse code | ||
| Lima | |||
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| Signal flag | Semaphore | ASL Manual | Braille |
In Unicode the capital L is codepoint U+004C and the lowercase l is U+006C. In some fonts, a lowercase l may be difficult to distinguish from a 1(one), a more stylized version based on the handwritten ℓ is sometimes used - this is often used as a suffix on a number to represent litres. Sometimes, capital I is also hard to distinguish from a lowercase l as well, as many fonts use a vertical bar for both of these characters. In recent times, many new fonts have curved the lowercase form to the right and is increasingly common, especially on European road signs and advertisements. Its codepoint is U +2113 and its numeric character reference is "ℓ".
The ASCII code for capital L is 76 and for lowercase l is 108; or in binary 01001100 and 01101100, correspondingly.
The EBCDIC code for capital L is 211 and for lowercase l is 147.
The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "L" and "l" for upper and lower case respectively.
Things named "L"
- In computational complexity theory, L (complexity) is the class of all decision problems calculable in logarithmic space.
- A mathematical adventure game was made for the BBC Micro called "L"
- In set theory, L denotes Gödel's constructible universe.
- The city of Chicago, Illinois has an elevated train called the L.
- A service of the New York City Subway is also named the L.
- L is a novel by the Norwegian author Erlend Loe.
- At the end of the movie Men In Black, the lead female character becomes agent "L".
- In the manga Death Note, L is the alias of a brilliant, eccentric detective investigating the 'Kira' murders.
- L is a record album, audio cassette and 8-track by Lol Creme and Kevin Godley.
- L is a record album by Steve Hillage
- L is a slang term for blunt in marijuana counterculture and in the hip-hop sub-culture.
Abbreviation or symbol "L"
- In anatomy, L means lumbar, as in L-spine, or written with a number (from L1 to L5) refers to a numbered lumbar vertebra or lumbar spinal nerve.
- In astronomy,
- L stands for the brown dwarf class of stars (lithium stars).
- L is a provisional designation prefix for any comet, asteroid, or minor planet discovered between June 1 and 15 of a year.
- In Optical isomerism, L means levorotatory
- Molecules with L stereochemistry conformation are oriented in decreasing importance going anti-clockwise around a chiral carbon
- The human body only uses L amino acids. Bacteria and other prokaryotes use D amino acids and are targeted by antibiotics.
- In biochemistry, L is the symbol for leucine.
- In botany, L. is the standard abbreviation for Carolus Linnaeus when cited as the author of plants he described, as in e.g. Stone Pine Pinus pinea L.
- In electrical engineering, L is often the variable for inductance.
- In physics, L is used to represent angular momentum.
- In etymology and languages, L. is the abbreviation for Latin.
- In finance, L is the New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol for Liberty Media Corporation A
- In industry, L often denotes "large size". For example, European clothing-size standard EN 13402 defines the size code L to refer to chest girths 102–110 cm for men's clothes and bust girths 98–106 cm for women's clothes, but garment manufacturers also use their own non-standard defining body measurements for this size code.
- In international licence plate codes, L stands for Luxembourg.
- The International Phonetic Alphabet uses a small capital [ʟ] to represent the velar lateral approximant sound.
- In navigation, L denotes the relative direction "left"; see left and right.
- As the first letter of a postal code,
- In Canada, L stands for Central Ontario.
- In the United Kingdom, L stands for Liverpool.
- In radio,
- the L band ranges from 0.39 to 1.55 GHz.
- the NATO L band ranges from 40 to 60 GHz.
- In Roman naming convention, L is the abbreviation for the praenomen Lucius.
- In the SI system, l, ℓ or L is the symbol for the litre, a unit of volume or capacity.
- In video games, L is the symbol for Luigi, a Nintendo character.
- When affixed to the back of a car, L often means learner.
- L is an IRC-service (bot on the popular IRC-network QuakeNet).
- In the 1980s, placing ones right hand on the forehead in the shape of an L means calling them a loser.
- An L in cannabis culture is a certain way of rolling a joint using two skins, in the shape of an L.
Alternate meanings for the symbol "L"
- In Roman numerals, L denotes the number 50 (there are also separate Unicode characters for this number, 0x216C "Ⅼ" and 0x217C "ⅼ").
- The lowercase l is sometimes used in place of the number 1 in typewritten text. Some typewriters did not even have a key for the numeral, so a number of people have retained the habit even in the computer age.
- The Greek Lambda is sometimes used (for example, in the Disney movie Atlantis) instead of the letter A
L is used by some groups of people to indicate a loser in life.
See also
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