LingoflyLl ll — ella
«ella» is a digraph of the Valencian script, read as “a soft ly, one whole sound”. A soft ly said as one fused sound, like the "lli" of "million". For example, in the word “cavall” — horse. The Valencian 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 a horse.
In short
| Character | Ll ll |
| Name | ella |
| Sound | a soft ly, one whole 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 said as one fused sound, like the "lli" 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 “signature signs” group
ç is the only letter with a cedilla, l·l the only mid-word dot in Europe. The letter pairs are not letters, but without them you cannot read so much as a menu.
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, one whole 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 Valencian character ll read?
As “a soft ly, one whole sound” — it is a digraph of the Valencian script. A soft ly said as one fused sound, like the "lli" 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 Valencian script: it is called “ella” and reads as “a soft ly, one whole sound”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.