h-land

hedgehogs dni

  • they/them

location: ohio
sona: nine-banded armadillo
good at cohost: no

avatar by BlueHunterART


h-land
@h-land

So, interestingly enough, I have found that this is not the best way to write what is being expressed here. The best way... Is Polish.


One of Europe's many diacritic-variant Latin letters is the L with stroke. Primarily, it's used in Polish. I don't speak Polish, nor will I pretend to, but I have looked into its phonetics a time or two because 1) it's unique, and 2) it's frustrating, and 3) there's a lot there. But I'm not here to talk about how Polish chose to use Z as H and while those funny little inverse hats other Latin-script Slavic languages use are actually better than digraphs - not today. No, it's just the L-with stroke.

Per Wikipedia:

In Polish, ⟨Ł⟩ is used to distinguish the historical dark (velarized) L [ɫ] from clear L [l].

Now, that doesn't mean shit to most people. Certainly doesn't to me! There is not an L who has a mole and a Russian accent, framing Kermit for crimes that will get him sent to the gulag. There is not a version of L that you can hook up with LEDs for that gamer aesthetic. No, it's something about moving your tongue back in your mouth. But it's not like Polish people spend time thinking about where their tongue is when asking where the pierogi are or whatever. No, it's much simpler:

The Polish ⟨Ł⟩ now sounds the same as the English ⟨W⟩, [w] as in water (except for older speakers in some eastern dialects where it still sounds velarized).

Thanks to the magic of linguistic evolution, we have found in the wild a character that looks like it should be an L but is actually a W.

It is the ideal way to write the kind of thing you say when Mr. Obama finds you in a cave slowly filling with water.

It is L as a W.

It is:

HEŁŁO

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