LingoflyLl ll — ella
«ella» is a digraph of the Catalan script, read as “a soft "ly" said as one sound”. A soft ly pronounced as a single fused sound, as in the middle of "million". For example, in the word “cavall” — horse. The Catalan alphabet has 27 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. This character does not count as a letter of the alphabet. Soft at the start of a word and at the end: llet is "milk", cavall is "horse".
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 327 words of this site.
How it sounds
A soft ly pronounced as a single fused sound, as in the middle of "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 — 27 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 Catalan script. A soft ly pronounced as a single fused sound, as in the middle of "million". For example, in the word “cavall” — horse.
What is the sign 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.