Polish L (ł Ł): The L with a Stroke That Polish Says as W
Polish l is ł, capital Ł: an l crossed by a stroke, and a letter in its own right rather than an accented l. Modern Polish says it as a w, so Michał is /ˈmi.xaw/. Navajo writes the same ł for the Welsh ll sound. Tap a tile to copy either case.
How do you type ł on a keyboard or phone?
On a Mac, ł is Fn/Globe+E, then search "latin small letter l with stroke", then ł; on Windows it is Win+., then Symbols, then ł. Each row below gives the documented method for one device or app; the vendor help pages they come from are linked under the table.
| Device or app | Keys |
|---|---|
| Mac | Fn/Globe+E, then search "latin small letter l with stroke", then ł How to type accents on a Mac |
| Windows | Win+., then Symbols, then ł How to type accents on Windows |
| Microsoft Word | 0142, then Alt+X How to type accents in Word |
| Google Docs | Insert, then Symbols, then Special characters, then search "latin small letter l with stroke" How to type accents in Google Docs |
Sources:Mac (Apple) (opens in a new tab)Windows (Microsoft) (opens in a new tab)Microsoft Word (Microsoft) (opens in a new tab)Google Docs (Google) (opens in a new tab)
- ł l with stroke · used in 4 languages
- Ł capital l with stroke · used in 4 languages
Which languages use ł?
ł is part of the standard alphabet of 4 languages in the Unicode CLDR: Lower Sorbian, Polish, Silesian, Upper Sorbian.
Why does the Polish l sound like w?
Because ł once spelled an l sound, and the sound moved to w while the spelling stayed. The stroke on the Polish l was added to keep l and ł apart in writing. The history of Polish spelling (opens in a new tab) on ZPE, the Polish education ministry's textbook platform, lists l against ł among the pairs that early writers had to settle, beside i, y and j.
Stanisław Zaborowski's Ortographia, from the early sixteenth century, proposed dots, strokes, hooks and tails for such sounds. The same page names ł and ż as letters that came in with those changes and are still written today.
Old words show the path from l to w. Wiktionary traces ława (opens in a new tab), a bench, back to Proto-Slavic *lavà, a word with an l in it. Today's Polish says it /ˈwa.va/. Its near twin lawa (opens in a new tab), lava, is a loan from Italian and keeps a plain l.
| Word | Letter | Said today | Where it came from |
|---|---|---|---|
| ława, a bench | ł | /ˈwa.va/ | Proto-Slavic *lavà |
| lawa, lava | l | /ˈla.va/ | Italian lava |
| Michał, a given name | ł | /ˈmi.xaw/ | Latin Michaēl, like Czech and Slovak Michal |
The name row comes from Wiktionary's entry for Michał (opens in a new tab), which compares it with Czech and Slovak Michal, spelled with a plain l. Some Polish dialects still keep an l-like ł, as the FAQ below explains. In standard Polish the stroke now marks the w, so ława and lawa differ by one sound and one letter.
Which languages write ł, and is it always a w?
No. The Polish l is not always a w. Two groups of alphabets write ł, and they ask for different sounds. In Polish and in Upper and Lower Sorbian, ł is a w. In a run of North American alphabets it is /ɬ/, which Unicode's IPA chart calls a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative. Wiktionary's Navajo section says it sounds like the ll of Welsh.
The rows come from the language sections of Wiktionary's entry for ł (opens in a new tab). The last row is from the Latin Extended-A chart (opens in a new tab), which names Polish, Sorbian and Iñupiaq as users.
| Alphabet | What ł spells | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Polish | /w/ | the standard sound today |
| Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian | /w/ | both call the letter eł |
| Kashubian, Silesian | a letter of the alphabet | no separate sound given |
| Navajo | /ɬ/ | łį́į́ʼ, horse, is /ɬĩ́ːʔ/ |
| Inupiaq, Chipewyan, Kwak'wala, Nootka, Okanagan, Canadian Tlingit | /ɬ/ | Okanagan also writes ɬ |
| Latvian, before 1921 | /ʎ/ | dropped in favour of ļ |
| Belarusian and Ukrainian in Latin letters | listed by Unicode | no sound given in the chart |
The Navajo word is from Wiktionary's entry for łį́į́ʼ (opens in a new tab). Read with Polish habits, it would open with a w. Read with Navajo habits, Paweł would end in the Welsh ll. Each reading is right only inside its own language, and the card above lists the alphabets for which Unicode's locale data includes ł.
Which l with a line through it do you need: ł, ƚ, ɬ or ɫ?
For a word in Polish, Sorbian or Navajo, you need ł, the Polish l. A search for an l with line through it can turn up any of the four below, and the other three are phonetic letters with jobs of their own. The notes are the ones Unicode prints in its code charts for Latin Extended-B (opens in a new tab), IPA Extensions (opens in a new tab) and Latin Extended-A. Names and capitals come from UnicodeData.txt (opens in a new tab).
| Small | Capital | Code point | Unicode name | What the chart says it is for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ł | Ł | U+0142 | L WITH STROKE | Polish, Sorbian, Iñupiaq |
| ƚ | Ƚ | U+019A | L WITH BAR | "barred l"; Americanist phonetic usage for IPA ɬ |
| ɬ | Ɬ | U+026C | L WITH BELT | voiceless alveolar lateral fricative |
| ɫ | Ɫ | U+026B | L WITH MIDDLE TILDE | velarized voiced alveolar lateral approximant |
The ɬ row is the sound Navajo spells with ł. A Navajo dictionary and a phonetic transcription of one word therefore use two different characters: ł in łį́į́ʼ, ɬ in /ɬĩ́ːʔ/. The barred ƚ is the Americanist phonetic spelling of that same sound.
ɫ writes a velarized l, a different sound again. The charts cross-refer ɫ to ł, and ł to both ƚ and ɫ: the shapes are close enough to mix up. In a search box or a database they are four unrelated characters.
Why is ł not an l with an accent in Unicode?
Unicode never built ł out of an l. Its first name for the letter was LATIN SMALL LETTER L SLASH, and UnicodeData.txt still keeps that Unicode 1.0 name beside today's L WITH STROKE. So l with slash and l with stroke are one character, U+0142. What the file gives ł is an empty decomposition field. The l letters with real accents each have one.
| Letter | Where it is used | Decomposition in UnicodeData.txt | After NFD and deleting marks |
|---|---|---|---|
| ĺ | Slovak | l + U+0301, acute | l |
| ľ | Slovak | l + U+030C, caron | l |
| ļ | Latvian | l + U+0327, cedilla | l |
| ŀ | Catalan, a legacy compatibility letter | compatibility only: l + U+00B7, middle dot | ŀ |
| ł | Polish, Sorbian | none | ł |
The languages come from AccentPad's facts, except ŀ, which the Latin Extended-A chart files as a Catalan legacy character. The chart prefers l followed by a middle dot for Catalan.
The last column is our own measurement, not a rule. On 2026-10-10 we ran the usual accent strip, NFD (opens in a new tab) followed by deleting combining marks, in Node.js v26.0.0 with ICU 78.3. Ľubomír came out as Lubomir. Paweł and Michał came out as they went in. ŀ also passes NFD unchanged; only the compatibility form, NFKD, splits it into l and a middle dot.
An ASCII-only system therefore needs an explicit entry for the Polish l: ł becomes l, Ł becomes L. The phonetic look-alikes need the same entry, since ƚ, ɬ and ɫ have no decomposition either. What that does to Polish place names is on our Polish alphabet page.
Which names and places are spelled with ł?
Given names come from Wikidata, the most widely covered first by the number of Wikipedia editions about them, and places come from the GeoNames list of cities, largest population first, kept only where an official language of the country writes the letter.
- Mieczysław
- Przemysław
- Michał
- Czesław
- Zdzisław
- Paweł
- Bogusław
- Bronisław
- Władysław
- Rafał
- Jarosław
- Łukasz
- Wrocław (Poland)
- Łódź (Poland)
- Białystok (Poland)
- Praga Południe (Poland)
- Białołeka (Poland)
- Płock (Poland)
- Wałbrzych (Poland)
- Włocławek (Poland)
How to type the Polish l, step by step
Step 1: Windows: the Symbols tab behind Win+.
Win+. opens a panel that starts on emoji. Its Symbols tab holds the Latin letters, ł among them, and one click puts the letter where your cursor was.
Step 2: Mac: the Character Viewer, searched by name
Press Fn/Globe+E and type latin small letter l with stroke into the search field. Click ł in the results. Search latin capital letter l with stroke for Ł.
Step 3: Word: 0142, then Alt+X
Type 0142 where ł belongs and press Alt+X. Word replaces the four characters with ł. Use 0141 for Ł.
Step 4: Google Docs: Insert, then Symbols, then Special characters
Open the Insert menu, point to Symbols, choose Special characters and search latin small letter l with stroke. Click ł to drop it into the document.
Step 5: HTML: the named entity
Write ł for ł or Ł for Ł in a web page. The numeric reference ł gives ł in HTML and XML alike.
What is the Unicode code for ł?
ł is U+0142, LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH STROKE, added in Unicode 1.1 in 1993. In UTF-8 it is stored as the bytes C5 82, and the table gives every escape a developer needs.
| Code point | U+0142 |
|---|---|
| Name | LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH STROKE |
| Added in | Unicode 1.1 (1993) |
| UTF-8 bytes | C5 82 |
| HTML | ł ł ł |
| CSS | \0142 |
| JavaScript | \u0142 |
| Python | \u0142 |
| URL | %C5%82 |
If a page shows Å‚ instead of ł, its UTF-8 bytes are being read as Windows-1252. Serve the page as UTF-8 (<meta charset="utf-8">) to fix it.
Which characters look like ł?
These look like ł but are different characters, and search, sorting and passwords treat them differently: ᛅ.
Which letters are related to the Polish l?
These letter pages share an accent mark or a language with ł Ł, the most shared languages first.
Whole alphabets with every letter in order, including ł: Polish alphabet.
Which other l letters carry a mark besides ł?
Every l with an accent mark on AccentPad, lowercase then capitals. Tap one to copy it:
ł Ł have no Alt code: Windows cannot type them that way.
Need a letter other than ł?
Frequently asked questions about the Polish l
Do all Polish speakers say ł as w?
No. The w is the standard sound, and some dialects keep an older one. Anna Kostecka-Sadowa's 2020 study of villages near Lubaczów, in south-eastern Poland, finds a front-tongue dental ł well preserved there. She counts it among the traits that tie those dialects to the Polish of the old eastern borderlands, now in Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania.
Is the l with a line through it the same character as IPA ɬ?
No. ɬ is U+026C, the IPA letter l with belt, and ł is U+0142. They can stand for one sound: Navajo spells /ɬ/ with ł, so its dictionaries write ł while a transcription writes ɬ. Wiktionary's Okanagan entry gives ɬ as an alternative form of the ł letter.
What did ł mean in Old English manuscripts?
It was a scribe's shorthand for oþþe, the Old English word for or. Wiktionary traces this ł to Latin vel, which also means or: an l with a stroke through its stem stood for the whole word, the way an ampersand stands for and.
How do I type a capital Ł in Word?
Type 0141 and press Alt+X. Word turns the code into Ł on the spot. The small letter works the same way with 0142. Microsoft documents this code method in its guide to inserting Latin-based symbols.