LAMEDH

'Lamed' or 'Lamedh' is the twelfth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . Its sound value is .
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Lambda (Λ), Latin L, and Cyrillic El (Л).

Contents

Origins

Arabic lām

Hebrew Lamedh

Pronunciation

Significance

Origins

Lamedh is believed to have come from a pictogram of an ox goad or cattle prod. Some have suggested a shepherd's staff.

Arabic lām

The letter is named ''lām'', and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:
Lām is used as a prefix in two different ways. Lām-kasra (لـِ, ) is essentially a preposition meaning "to" or "for", as in لِوالدي ''liwālidī'', "for my father". In this usage, it has become concatenated with other words to form new constructions often treated as independent words: for instance, لِماذا ''limāḏā'', meaning "why?", is derived from لـِ li and ماذا ''māḏā'', meaning "what?" thus getting "for what?". This construction is virtually identical semantically from that in most Romance languages, e.g. French ''pourquoi'', Spanish ''por qué'', and Italian ''perché'' (it should be noted that ''ché'' is an archaism and not in current use).
The other construction, lām-fatḥa (لَـ ) is used as an emphatic particle in very formal Arabic.

Hebrew Lamedh

Pronunciation

Lamedh represents an alveolar lateral approximant ().

Significance

Lamedh in gematria represents the number 30.
With the letter Vav it refers to the Lamedvavniks, the 36 righteous people who save the world from destruction.
As an abbreviation, it can stand for litre. Also, a sign on a car with a Lamedh on it means that the driver is a student of driving (the Lamedh stands for ''lomed'', learner).
As a prefix, it can have two purposes:

★ It can be attached to verb roots, designating the infinitive (''Daber'' means "speak", ''Ledaber'' means to speak).

★ It can also act as a preposition meaning "to" or "for".