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The barred lambda (Ƛ ƛ) (U+A7DC LATIN CAPITAL LETTER LAMBDA WITH STROKE, U+019B ƛ LATIN SMALL LETTER LAMBDA WITH STROKE), is a modified letter of the Greek alphabet, commonly encountered in North American linguistics. It is used by the Salishan and Wakashan languages in Canada.[1] It is also used in Americanist phonetic notation, where it is also known as running man,[2] to transcribe a voiceless alveolar lateral affricate [t͡ɬ]. In physics, it represents the reduced Compton wavelength, i.e. the Compton wavelength λ divided by 2π.

Capital letter barred lambda
Small letter barred lambda
Cased forms of the barred lambda. The capital was assigned to Unicode in 2024.

It was first used in a phonetics context in American Anthropologist in 1934:

λ for [dl] has been used in Eskimo by Jenness … ƛ for [] is an innovation formed from λ as ł from l.[3]

It is also used for the affricate [t͡ɬ] in transcribing the Sahaptin language, e.g., iƛúpna ‘he jumped’, and it is commonly used for the same purpose in several languages of the Caucasus, such as Hinuq.[4] In addition, its counterpart with a combining comma above right (U+0315), ƛ̓ [fr], is used for many of the Salish languages, such as Klallam, for an alveolar lateral ejective affricate [t͡ɬʼ].

Encodings

Character information
Preview ƛ
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER LAMBDA WITH STROKE LATIN SMALL LETTER LAMBDA WITH STROKE
Encodings decimal hex dec hex
Unicode 42972 U+A7DC 411 U+019B
UTF-8 234 159 156 EA 9F 9C 198 155 C6 9B
Numeric character reference Ƛ Ƛ ƛ ƛ

References

  1. ^ Humchitt, Robyn; Jacquerye, Denis; King, Kevin (2023-07-17). “L2/23-191: Proposal to Encode 3 Additional Latin Characters for Wakashan and Salishan Languages to the Unicode Standard” (PDF).
  2. ^ [1] Archived 2008-07-03 at the Wayback Machine (strictly speaking, this refers to the glottalized version, [t͡ɬʼ])
  3. ^ Herzog, George; Newman, Stanley S.; Sapir, Edward; Swadesh, Mary Haas; Swadesh, Morris; Voegelin, Charles F. (Oct–Dec 1934). “Some orthographic recommendations”. American Anthropologist. 36 (4): 629–631. doi:10.1525/aa.1934.36.4.02a00300.
  4. ^ Forker, Diana (2013-04-16). A Grammar of Hinuq:. DE GRUYTER. doi:10.1515/9783110303971. ISBN 978-3-11-030376-6.