Latin Capital Letter Lambda With Stroke

A lateral affricate, roughly a “tl” sound made as one consonant.

An affricate begins with a brief stop, then releases into friction; lateral means the air escapes along the sides of the tongue. “Tl” is only a rough English cue, not two letters to pronounce separately.

Phonetic transcription—a way to write speech sounds—uses Ƛ for this sound. In a spelling system, it is a letter; the language’s own rules set the pronunciation.

Where does barred lambda come from?

It began as a sound symbol and later served as a spelling letter.

One early printed record is a 1934 paper from Americanist linguistics, a tradition used to document languages of the Americas. It describes lowercase ƛ as a new sign formed from Greek λ by analogy with barred l. This records a design link; the Greek and Latin letters remain distinct.

Some spelling systems for languages in the Salishan and Wakashan families of northwestern North America use it as a letter. Americanist descriptions also use it for Sahaptin and some languages of the Caucasus. A raised comma can mark glottalization—a brief catch or closure in the throat.

What if someone sends Ƛ alone?

As of 2026-09-12, a lone Ƛ has no standard chat reading.

Treat it as an isolated letter and ask for the word or language. In a linguistics or language-learning message, look for a spelling or speech sound rather than a mood.

Uppercase and lowercase forms depend on the spelling system. The Puyallup Tribal Language Program’s Lushootseed alphabet showed a single case as of 2026-09-12; other orthographies use uppercase and lowercase letters. In those, Ƛ can be the capital form.