Ł

In normal typefaces, the letter has a stroke approximately in the middle of the vertical stem, crossing it at an angle between 70° and 45°, never horizontally. In cursive handwriting and typefaces that imitate it, the capital letter has a horizontal stroke through the middle and looks very similar to the pound sign £. In the cursive lowercase letter, the stroke is also horizontal and placed on top of the letter instead of going through the middle of the stem, which would not be distinguishable from the letter t. The stroke is either straight or slightly wavy, depending on the style. Unlike ⟨l⟩, the letter ⟨ł⟩ is usually written without a noticeable loop at the top. Most publicly available multilingual cursive typefaces, including commercial ones, feature an incorrect glyph for ⟨ł⟩.[1]

A rare variant of the ł glyph is a cursive double-ł ligature, used in words such as Jagiełło, Radziwiłł or Ałłach (archaic: Allah), where the strokes at the top of the letters are joined into a single stroke.[1]

In Polish, ⟨Ł⟩ is used to distinguish the historical dark (velarized) L [ɫ] from clear L [l]. The Polish ⟨Ł⟩ now sounds the same as the English ⟨W⟩, [w] as in water (except for older speakers in some eastern dialects where it still sounds velarized).

In 1440, Jakub Parkoszowic proposed a letter resembling ${\displaystyle \ \ell }$ to represent clear L. For dark L he suggested "l" with a stroke running in the opposite direction to the modern version. The latter was introduced in 1514–1515 by Stanisław Zaborowski in his Orthographia seu modus recte scribendi et legendi Polonicum idioma quam utilissimus. L with stroke originally represented a velarized alveolar lateral approximant [ɫ],[2] a pronunciation that is preserved in the eastern part of Poland[3] and among the Polish minority in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. This pronunciation is similar to Russian unpalatalised ⟨Л⟩ in native words and grammar forms.

In modern Polish, Ł is usually pronounced /w/ (as [w] in English wet).[4] This pronunciation first appeared among Polish lower classes in the 16th century. It was considered an uncultured accent by the upper classes (who pronounced ⟨Ł⟩ as /ɫ/) until the mid-20th century when this distinction gradually began to fade.

The shift from [ɫ] to [w] in Polish has affected all instances of dark L, even word-initially or intervocalically, e.g. ładny ("pretty, nice") is pronounced [ˈwadnɨ], słowo ("word") is [ˈswɔvɔ], and ciało ("body") is [ˈtɕawɔ]. Ł often alternates with clear L, such as the plural forms of adjectives and verbs in the past tense that are associated with masculine personal nouns, e.g. mały → mali ([ˈmawɨ] → [ˈmali]). Alternation is also common in declension of nouns, e.g. from nominative to locative, tło → na tle ([twɔ] → [naˈtlɛ]).

Polish final Ł also often corresponds to Ukrainian word-final ⟨В⟩ Ve (Cyrillic) and Belarusian ⟨Ў⟩ Short U (Cyrillic). Thus, "he gave" is "dał" in Polish, "дав" in Ukrainian, "даў" in Belarusian (all pronounced [daw]), but "дал" [daɫ] in Russian.

In Belarusian Łacinka (both in the 1929[5] and 1962[6][7] versions), ⟨Ł⟩ corresponds to Cyrillic ⟨Л⟩ (El), and is normally pronounced /ɫ/ (almost exactly as in English pull).

In Navajo and Elaponke, ⟨Ł⟩ is used for a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative /ɬ/, like the Welsh double L.[8][9]

⟨Ł⟩ is used in orthographic transcription of Ahtna, an Athabaskan language spoken in Alaska; it represents a breathy lateral fricative.[10][11] It is also used in Tanacross, a related Athabaskan language.[12]

When transcribing Armenian into the Latin alphabet, ⟨Ł⟩ may be used to write the letter ⟨Ղ⟩ /ʁ/, for example Ղուկաս => Łukas. In Classical Armenian, ⟨Ղ⟩ was pronounced as /ɫ/, which morphed into /ʁ/ in both standard varieties of modern Armenian. Other transcriptions of ⟨Ղ⟩ include ⟨Ṙ⟩, ⟨Ġ⟩ or ⟨Gh⟩.

• Ў, ў – short U (Belarusian Cyrillic)
• £ – pound sign
• In Venetian, a similar glyph ⟨Ƚ⟩, ⟨ƚ⟩ (L with bar, a horizontal bar) is used as substitution for L in many words in which the pronunciation of "L" has changed for some dialects, i.e. by becoming voiceless or becoming the sound of the shorter vowel corresponding to /ɰ/ or /ɛ/.
• Ɨ (I-bar)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ł.

• Kreska ukośna in Polish Diacritics: How to?, by Adam Twardoch, Polish country delegate at ATypI