Џ

Џ , џ - the letter of the extended Cyrillic alphabet, is included in the alphabets of the Serbian , Macedonian and Abkhaz languages. In the Serbian alphabet, the 29th, in the Macedonian - 30th. Indicates affricate [ ʤ ] (in Abkhaz ɖʐ or dʐ ).

It comes from Romanian Cyrillic writing , where it has been used since the 15th century and denoted affricate [ ʤ ].

It is found in Serbian writing (mostly in borrowings from Turkish or through Turkish) with the same meaning from the 17th century , but irregularly: at least Vuk Stefanovic (not yet named Karadzic, Serb. Karaџiћ ) in the first version of the reformed Serbian alphabet, the letter Џ I didn’t include it (see page 9 of his grammar of 1814 ), using the digraph chj : Boijia, Karapanzhiћ (but he knew about the existence of such a letter by mentioning it on page 2). The uppercase letter Џ that appeared in a later version of its alphabet was entirely on the line (see page 9 of the ABC of 1827 ), but this variant of the style did not take root.

The letters in the Serbian alphabet have no names. When a spelling is required, the letter is called “dje” (as opposed to “djie,” which corresponds to the letter Ђ ). There is a variant of the name “jerv”, created by analogy with the traditional names “worm” for the letter H and “derv” (sometimes “worm”) for the letter Ћ .

The letter was entered into the Macedonian alphabet on December 4, 1944 by a vote of members of the “Philological Commission for the Establishment of the Macedonian Alphabet and the Macedonian Literary Language” (10 votes in favor, 1 against); an alternative proposal was the use of digraph j according to the Bulgarian model.

They tried to introduce the letter into Ukrainian writing: it was used in the poetry collection Mermaid Dniester , published in 1837 , but the corresponding spelling system did not take root.

Vsevolod Miller used the letter in the Ossetian language ("Ossetian Etudes").

In Church Slavonic fonts (both old-print and modern), the font ерт is sometimes used for the letter C.