Ll

Ll or ll is a digraph that occurs in several languages.

English

In English, ⟨ll⟩ often represents the same sound as single ⟨l⟩: /l/. The doubling is used to indicate that the preceding vowel is (historically) short, or that the "l" sound is to be extended longer than a single ⟨l.⟩ would provide (etymologically, in latinisms coming from a gemination). Different English language traditions use ⟨l⟩ and ⟨ll⟩ in different words: for example the past tense form of "travel" is spelt "travelled" in British English but "traveled" in American English. See also: Doubled consonants. ⟨ll⟩ is also used in syllable-coda position in monosyllabic words or compounds derived from them, such as "will", "mall", and "killjoy"

Welsh

In Welsh, ⟨ll⟩ stands for a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative sound (IPA: [ɬ]). This sound is very common in place names in Wales because it occurs in the word llan, for example, Llanelli, where the ⟨ll⟩ appears twice, or Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, where (in the long version of the name) the ⟨ll⟩ appears five times – with two instances of llan and two consecutive ⟨ll⟩ in -drobwllllan-.

In Welsh, ⟨ll⟩ is a separate digraph letter from ⟨l⟩ (e.g., lwc sorts before llaw). In modern Welsh this, and other digraph letters, are written with two symbols but count as one letter. In Middle Welsh it was written with a tied ligature; this ligature is included in the Latin Extended Additional Unicode block as U+1EFA Ỻ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER MIDDLE-WELSH LL and U+1EFB ỻ LATIN SMALL LETTER MIDDLE-WELSH LL. This ligature is seldom used in Modern Welsh, but equivalent ligatures may be included in modern fonts, for example the three fonts commissioned by the Welsh Government in 2020.