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, 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 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 (Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian), and Itelmen. It was also once used in the Udege 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 double L in the absence of Yeísmo 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 Њ њ : Cyrillic letter Nje Computing codes References External links Audio samples of the letter Lje Cyrillic ligatures Serbian letters