Ľ
Ľ/ľ is a grapheme found officially in the Slovak alphabet and in some versions of the Ukrainian Latin alphabet. It is an L with a caron diacritical mark, more normally ˇ but simplified to look like an apostrophe with L, and is pronounced as palatal lateral approximant [ʎ], similar to the "lj-" sound in Ljubljana or million.[1]
Slovak[edit]
Examples include:
- podnikateľ: "businessman"; skladateľ: "composer"; bádateľ: "researcher"
- ľalia: "Lilium"; ľan: "linen"; ľuľkovec zlomocný: "Atropa belladonna"
- ľad: "ice"; ľadovec: "iceberg"
- Poľana, mountain range in Central Slovakia; Sečovská Poľanka, historical name for village Sečovská Polianka in Eastern Slovakia used from 1920 until 1948
- Ján Figeľ, Slovak politician who was European Commissioner for Education, Training and Culture from 2004 to 2009
- Jozef Ľupták, teacher who took part in the Slovak National Uprising and was killed in action on 27 October 1944
Note that an approximation using an ' apostrophe is sometimes found in some English texts, for example "L'udovit Stur" (sic) for correct Slovak Ľ-caron in Ľudovít Štúr. This incorrect usage is sometimes the result of an OCR error.
Ukrainian[edit]
⟨Ľ⟩ appears in some versions of the Ukrainian Latin Alphabet (Latynka), such as Jireček and Luchuk.[2] It represents a palatalised ⟨l⟩, transcribed as /lʲ/. In other versions, it is written as ⟨lj⟩ or ⟨li⟩.
References[edit]
- ^ Háček (Caron) - Diacritics Project @ Typo.cz "In Czech and Slovak, the caron has a special vertical form used on tall characters (ď, ť, ľ, Ľ). Its introduction was no doubt a solution to the limited vertical space available on the body of a piece of metal type. The regular caron (ě, š, č, ň, …) ..."
- ^ Korotkyj pravopys
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