Special Letters
The ligatures ⟨Љ⟩ and ⟨Њ⟩, together with ⟨Џ⟩, ⟨Ђ⟩ and ⟨Ћ⟩ were developed specially for the Serbian alphabet.
- Karadžić based the letters ⟨Љ⟩ and ⟨Њ⟩ on a design by Sava Mrkalj, combining the letters ⟨Л⟩ (L) and ⟨Н⟩ (N) with the soft sign (Ь).
- Karadžić based ⟨Џ⟩ on letter "Gea" in the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet.
- ⟨Ћ⟩ was adopted by Karadžić to represent the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate (IPA: /tɕ/). The letter was based on and adapted from the letter Djerv, which is the 12th letter of the Glagolitic alphabet; that letter had been used in written Serbian since the 12th century, to represent /ɡʲ/, dʲ/ and /dʑ/.
- Karadžić adopted a design by Lukijan Mušicki for the letter ⟨Ђ⟩. It was based on the letter ⟨Ћ⟩, as adapted by Karadžić.
- ⟨Ј⟩ was adopted from the Latin alphabet.
⟨Љ⟩, ⟨Њ⟩ and ⟨Џ⟩ were later adopted for use in the Macedonian alphabet.
Read more about this topic: Serbian Cyrillic Alphabet
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