L
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
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History
The letter L is derived ultimately from the Semitic Lamed (crook/goad) which stood for the phonetic value /l/ as did the Greek letter Lambda Λ (upper case) or λ (lower case), as well as the equivalent Etruscan and Latin letters. In reference, it is spelled el or ell.
Usage
In English, L can have several values, depending on whether it occurs before or after a vowel. The lateral alveolar approximant (IPA /l/) occurs before a vowel, as in lip or please, while the velarized lateral alveolar approximant (IPA /ɫ/) occurs in bell and milk (See Dark L). This velarization does not occur in many European languages that use L, and is also a factor making L difficult to pronounce for users of languages such as Japanese or Chinese that either lack or have different values for L.
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 palatalised L (IPA /ʎ/) occurs in many languages, and is represented by GL in Italian, LL in certain varieties of Spanish, and LH in Portuguese.
Alternate representations
Lima represents the letter L in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
In international Morse code the letter L is DitDahDitDit: · - · ·
In Braille the letter L is represented as ⠇ (in Unicode), the dot pattern,
X. X. X.
Computing
In Unicode the capital L is codepoint U+004C and the lowercase l is U+006C.
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.
Meanings for L
- In biochemistry, L is the symbol for leucine.
- In stereochemistry, S (sinister) signifies counterclockwise arrangement of substituents around a carbon atom using the Cahn_Ingold_Prelog_priority_rules
- 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 computational complexity theory, L (complexity) is the class of all decision problems calculable in logarithmic space.
- 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 financial securities, L is the stock symbol for Liberty Media Corporation A
- In industry, L often denotes "large size".
- In international licence plate codes, L stands for Luxembourg.
- 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 Roman naming convention, L is the abbreviation for the praenomen Lucius.
- In Roman numerals, L denotes the number 50.
- 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.
- In the Metric system, l or L is symbol for litre or liter, a unit volume.
- In video games, L can be the abbreviation for Luigi, a Nintendo character.
- When affixed to the back of a car, L often means learner.
- The city of Chicago has an elevated train called the L.
- L is a novel by the Norwegian author Erlend Loe.
See also
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bs:L ca:L cs:L da:Lel:L es:L eo:L fr:L gl:L ia:L it:L la:L nl:L ja:L nn:L pl:L pt:L ro:L simple:L sl:L fi:L sv:L vi:L yo:L zh:L
