English In
English orthography, usually represents the phoneme , which can have several sound values, depending on the speaker's accent, and whether it occurs before or after a vowel. In
Received Pronunciation, the
alveolar lateral approximant (the sound represented in
IPA by lowercase ) occurs before a vowel, as in
lip or
blend, while the
velarized alveolar lateral approximant (IPA ) occurs in
bell and
milk. This velarization does not occur in many European languages that use ; it is also a factor making the pronunciation of difficult for users of languages that lack or have different values for it, such as
Japanese or some southern dialects of
Chinese. A medical condition or speech impediment restricting the pronunciation of is known as
lambdacism. In English orthography, is often silent in such words as
walk or
could (though its presence can modify the preceding vowel letter's value), and it is usually silent in such words as
palm and
psalm; however, there is some regional variation. L is the
eleventh most frequently used letter in the English language.
Other languages usually represents the sound or some other
lateral consonant. Common digraphs include , which has a value identical to in English, but has the separate value
voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (IPA ) in
Welsh, where it can appear in an initial position. In Spanish, represents (, , , , , or , depending on dialect). A
palatal lateral approximant or palatal (IPA ) occurs in many languages, and is represented by in
Italian, in
Spanish and
Catalan, in
Portuguese, and in
Latvian. In
Turkish, generally represents , but represents before , , , or . In
Washo, lower-case represents a typical [l] sound, while upper-case represents a
voiceless [l̥] sound, a bit like double in
Welsh.
Other systems The
International Phonetic Alphabet uses to represent the
voiced alveolar lateral approximant and a
small cap to represent the
voiced velar lateral approximant. ==Other uses==