Lje


Lje is a letter of the Cyrillic script.
Lje represents a palatal lateral, a sound similar to the palatalized alveolar lateral, which is in some languages represented by the digraph ⟨ль⟩ and pronounced like the in "million". Compare Latvian ⟨ļ⟩, Slovak ⟨ľ⟩, Spanish ⟨ll⟩, and Italian ⟨gl⟩.
Lje is a ligature of ⟨л⟩ and ⟨ь⟩. 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 for Serbo-Croatian.
It is today used in Macedonian, variants of Serbo-Croatian when written in Cyrillic, and Itelmen.

Related letters and other similar characters