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ꙥ

cyrillic small letter soft el

Cyrillic Small Letter Soft El

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ꙥ is a historical Cyrillic letter for a palatalized l, used chiefly in Old Church Slavonic and Church Slavonic writing. It preserves specialist spellings in historical, academic, and liturgical texts. The sequence л҄ expresses the same soft-l function differently, using two characters.

Text symbol

What ꙥ means

ꙥ marks a palatalized l in historical Church Slavonic. That is an l sound made with the tongue raised toward the palate.

The letter belongs to early Slavic and Church Slavonic manuscript traditions, alongside other historical soft-consonant letters. Editions and transcriptions use it to preserve the spelling of their source texts.

is ꙥ the same as л҄?

They serve the same soft-l function but are different sequences. л҄ combines the ordinary Cyrillic letter El with a mark showing palatalization; ꙥ is a separate letter. Researchers have discussed whether some fused historical forms began as ligatures.

Follow the spelling used by your edition. Substituting one form for the other can affect exact transcription and text searches.

how do I type ꙥ?

Use a character map or a specialist keyboard layout. A standard Cyrillic keyboard may not include this historical letter. For repeated Church Slavonic text, a dedicated layout can make it easier to enter.

If your system supports Unicode hex entry, enter A665. The receiving font also needs a glyph for the letter; a blank box points to a font or rendering problem.

Historical and specialist, especially in Church Slavonic, academic, and liturgical texts.

Do not replace it with ь: that is a different letter, the general soft sign.

Part of the collection

Ѧ
Old Cyrillic Letters (Old Church Slavonic)
Explore 234 more →

Who writes ꙥ

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Don't confuse it with

3
л
Cyrillic Small Letter El
Ordinary Cyrillic El; it does not preserve Soft El’s historical spelling distinction.
ь
Cyrillic Small Letter Soft Sign
The Cyrillic soft sign is a different letter, not Soft El.

л҄ Ordinary El plus a palatalization mark: the same soft-l function, encoded as two characters.

Questions people ask

1

Why does ꙥ show as a box?

The active font or renderer may lack a glyph for it. Use a font with Old Cyrillic or Church Slavonic coverage. The stored character remains ꙥ.

How to type or find ꙥ

Also called
soft el · soft l · мягкая л
Search it as
palatalized l · Old Cyrillic · Church Slavonic
Shows up in
Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Windows (Word)
⎇Alt+XType A665, then AltX to get ꙥ.
Windows
⊞Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win .).
macOS
⌃Control+⌘Command+␣SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “cyrillic small letter soft el”.
Linux
⎈Ctrl+⇧Shift+UType a665, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ꙥ
CSS
\A665
Character map
Find Soft El in your system’s character map or symbol picker and insert the standalone letter.
Unicode hex entry
If your system supports Unicode hex entry, enter A665; the keystrokes depend on the system.
Church Slavonic layout
For frequent historical text, a specialist Church Slavonic keyboard layout may include the letter.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ꙥ
HTML hex
ꙥ
CSS content
content: "\A665";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%EA%99%A5
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes

A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.

Families this belongs to

2

European scripts1,468 symbols

ͰͱͲͳ͵ͶͷͺͻͼͽͿ

Cyrillic506 symbols

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