L, or l or ℓ in cursive, is the twelfth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is el (pronounced ), plural els. History Lamedh may have come from a pictogram of an ox goad or cattle prod. Some have suggested a shepherd's staff. Use in writing systems Phonetic and phonemic transcription In phonetic and phonemic transcription, the International Phonetic Alphabet uses to represent the lateral alveolar approximant. 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. 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. 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 [ʎ], [j], [ʝ], [ɟʝ], or [ʃ], 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 Washo, lower-case represents a typical [l] sound, while upper-case represents a voiceless [l̥] sound, a bit like double in Welsh. Other uses The capital letter L is used as the currency sign for the Albanian lek and the Honduran lempira. It was often used, especially in handwriting, as the currency sign for the Italian lira. It is also infrequently used as a substitute for the pound sign (£), which