Ll ll — ella
«ella» is a digraph of Catalan, the “The Catalan Latin alphabet” script, read as “a soft "ly" said as one sound”. A soft ly pronounced as a single fused sound, as in the middle of Italian "famiglia" or English "million". For example, in the word “cavall” — horse. The Catalan alphabet has 35 letters in total. carrer is "street", cavall is "horse": at the end of a word the sound softens no less. It appears, for example, in the word “ell” — he.
In short
| Character | Ll ll |
| Name | ella |
| Sound | a soft "ly" said as one sound |
| What it is | a digraph |
In our course the character comes 14th of 35: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are l and l·l, appears in 328 words of this site.
How it sounds
A soft ly pronounced as a single fused sound, as in the middle of Italian "famiglia" or English "million"
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- cavallhorse
The character in the “signs of its own” group
ç is the only letter with a cedilla, l·l the only mid-word dot. The combinations are not letters, but no menu can be read without them.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «ella» it is “a soft "ly" said as one sound”, as in the word “cavall”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 35 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Catalan character ll read?
As “a soft "ly" said as one sound” — it is a digraph of the “The Catalan Latin alphabet” script. A soft ly pronounced as a single fused sound, as in the middle of Italian "famiglia" or English "million". For example, in the word “cavall” — horse.
What is the letter ll called?
Ella. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Catalan script: it is called “ella” and reads as “a soft "ly" said as one sound”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.
What can ll be confused with?
carrer is "street", cavall is "horse": at the end of a word the sound softens no less. Similar characters are best studied side by side and deliberately compared: learned on different days, they stay separate and get mixed up at their first meeting inside a word.