Je (Ј ј; italics:
''Ј ј'') is a letter of the
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic 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, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...
, taken over from the Latin letter
J.
[Maretić, Tomislav. ''Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga književnog jezika''. 1899.]
It commonly represents the
palatal approximant
The voiced palatal approximant is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ; the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic notation i ...
, like the pronunciation of in "hallelujah".
History
The Cyrillic letter ј was introduced in the 1818 Serbian dictionary of
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, on the basis of the Latin letter J.
Karadžić had previously used
ї instead for the same sound, a usage he took from
Dositej Obradović
Dositej Obradović ( sr-Cyrl, Доситеј Обрадовић, ; 17 February 1739 – 7 April 1811) was a Serbian writer, biographer, diarist, philosopher, pedagogue, educational reformer, linguist and the first minister of education of Se ...
,
[Karadžić, Vuk Stefanović. ''Pismenica serbskoga iezika, po govoru prostoga narod’a'', 1814.] and the final choice also notably edged out another expected candidate,
й, used in every other standard Slavic-language Cyrillic script.
Usage
An asterisk (*) means the language does not use the letter in its orthography anymore.
Related letters and other similar characters
*Е е :
Cyrillic letter Ye
*Й й :
Cyrillic letter Short I
*І і :
Cyrillic letter Dotted I
*Ҋ ҋ :
Cyrillic letter Short I with tail
*, :
Cyrillic letter Je with belt
*J j :
Latin letter J
*Y y :
Latin letter Y
Computing codes
External links
*
*
Notes
Cyrillic letters
{{Cyrillic-alphabet-stub