Lje

Lje (Љ љ; italics: Љ љ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.

Lje represents a palatal lateral /ʎ/, a sound similar (but not identical) to the palatalized alveolar lateral, which is in some languages represented by the digraph ⟨ль⟩ and pronounced /lʲ/ like the ⟨ll⟩ in "million".

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.