What ㄹ means
Its position gives it an r-like or l-like sound.
South Korean romanization writes ㄹ as r before a vowel, l before a consonant or at a word end, and ll when doubled. Those spellings show where the same Korean consonant sits; they are not separate letters.
Hangul was designed to write Korean speech, and ㄹ belonged to its original consonant set. The first record of Hunminjeongeum, the name of the script at its introduction, is dated to 1443; its explanatory book followed in 1446. As of 2026, South Korean spelling writes the word for travel as 여행, while North Korean spelling has 려행, retaining ㄹ at the start.
How do I type ㄹ by itself?
Use Korean input, then stop before adding a vowel.
On the Windows Korean IME, ㄹ is the F-key consonant. A following vowel makes the IME assemble a syllable block; a character picker can enter the standalone form.
ㄹ is the standalone compatibility form. The related ᄅ and ᆯ are conjoining forms used at the start and end of a syllable block, respectively, so an app may show them when composing Korean text.
Who writes ㄹ
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What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsR-like sound; South Korean romanization uses r.
Don't confuse it with
2
Alphabet
Questions people ask
1Why does ㄹ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
9
Collections with ㄹ
4
How to type or find ㄹ
- Also called
- rieul · 리을
- Search it as
- ㄹ · Korean r · Korean l · r or l · jamo · Korean keyboard
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ㄹ\3139Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.