Lje

Lje (Љ љ; italics: Љ љ ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. Lje represents a palatal lateral, a sound similar (but not identical) to the palatalized alveolar lateral approximant /lʲ/, which is in some languages represented by the digraph ⟨ль⟩ and pronounced like the $⟨ll⟩$ in "million". Compare Latvian ⟨ļ⟩, Slovak ⟨ľ⟩, Portuguese ⟨lh⟩, 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 $⟨ǈ⟩$ in Gaj's Latin alphabet for Serbo-Croatian.

It is today used in Macedonian, variants of Serbo-Croatian when written in Cyrillic (Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian), and Itelmen.

It was also once used in the Udege language, and in the Lithuanian Cyrillic alphabet.

Lje is commonly transliterated as lj but it can also be transliterated as ľ, or ļ.

Related letters and other similar characters

 * Л л : Л|Cyrillic letter El
 * Ь ь : Ь|Cyrillic letter Soft sign
 * Ll : Spanish double L in the absence of Yeísmo
 * Ľ ľ : Ľ|Latin letter L with caron - a Slovak letter
 * Ĺ ĺ : Ĺ|Latin letter L with acute - another Slovak letter
 * Ļ ļ : Ļ|Latin letter L with cedilla - a Latvian letter
 * Ly : Hungarian ly
 * Њ њ : Њ|Cyrillic letter Nje