Lje (Љ љ; italics:
''Љ љ'') is a letter of the
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, ...
.
Lje represents a
palatal lateral
The voiced palatal lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a rotated lowercase letter (not to be confused with lowercas ...
, a sound similar (but not identical) to the palatalized
alveolar lateral
The voiced alveolar lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral approximants is , and the equ ...
, which is in some languages represented by the digraph ⟨ль⟩ and pronounced like the in "million". Compare Latvian ⟨ļ⟩, Slovak ⟨ľ⟩, Portuguese ⟨lh⟩, Spanish ⟨ll⟩ and Italian ⟨gl⟩.
Lje is a
ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
of ⟨
л⟩ and ⟨
ь⟩.
[Maretić, Tomislav. ''Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga književnog jezika''. 1899.] It was invented by
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić for use in his 1818 dictionary, replacing the earlier digraph ⟨ль⟩.
It corresponds to the
digraph in
Gaj's Latin alphabet
Gaj's Latin alphabet ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Gajeva latinica, separator=" / ", Гајева латиница}, ), also known as ( sh-Cyrl, абецеда, ) or ( sh-Cyrl, гајица, link=no, ), is the form of the Latin script used for writing Serb ...
for
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...
.
It is today used in
Macedonian, variants of
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...
when written in Cyrillic (
Bosnian,
Montenegrin and
Serbian), and
Itelmen
The Itelmens (Itelmen: Итәнмән, russian: Ительмены) are an indigenous ethnic group of the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. The Itelmen language is distantly related to Chukchi and Koryak, forming the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language ...
.
Lje is commonly transliterated as but it can also be transliterated as , or .
Related letters and other similar characters
*Л л :
Cyrillic letter El
*Ь ь :
Cyrillic letter Soft sign
*Ll :
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
double L in the absence of
Yeísmo
''Yeísmo'' (; literally "Y-ism") is a distinctive feature of certain dialects of the Spanish language, characterized by the loss of the traditional palatal lateral approximant phoneme (written ) and its merger into the phoneme (written ), u ...
*Ľ ľ :
Latin letter L with caron - a Slovak letter
*Ĺ ĺ :
Latin letter L with acute - another Slovak letter
*Ļ ļ :
Latin letter L with cedilla - a Latvian letter
*Ly :
Hungarian ly
Ly is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian.
Usage
''Ly'' is the twentieth letter of the Hungarian alphabet. Its Hungarian name is ''elipszilon'' . Now, it can represent the same phoneme (palatal approximant) as the Hungarian ...
*Њ њ :
Cyrillic letter Nje
Computing codes
References
External links
*
*
Audio samplesof the letter Lje
Cyrillic ligatures
Serbian letters
{{Cyrillic-alphabet-stub