# Serbo-Croatian: nj, lj



## Nikined

In Latin alphabet letters _љ _and_ њ_ are transliterated as _lj_ and _nj_. Can't these letters also mean _лj _and_ нj _? Can in Serbian (and other Balcan languages) letter "j" be after "л" and "н"?
Sorry for English


----------



## ajitam

The Latin counterparts to the Cyrillic љ and њ are supposed to be digraphs just as in the Cyrillic alphabet and they have their entries in Unicode (*ǉ* and *ǌ*), but they're not used in practice. What's done instead is they're written as two consecutive letters.

There are indeed many cases where a "j" can appear after an "l" or an "n" without it representing a single phoneme. That's why transliterating from Latin to Cyrillic is not entirely straightfoward for Serbo-Croatian unlike the other way around.


----------



## Nikined

Can you give the examples?


----------



## bibax

There are probably words of foreign origin where nj is pronounced n+j like injekce in Czech or инъекция in Russian, anjel in Slovak, etc. But some Czechs say even iňekce (инекция) .


----------



## Милан

Nikined said:


> Can you give the examples?


Инјекција but like Czechs some Serbs say ињекција or инекција.
We also have конјункција, конјуктивитис, анјон, конјугација
For лј I didn't find anything

And I forgot Бенјамин Нетанјаху.


----------



## bibax

Yes. Nobody says Beňamin Netaňahu. 

But a simple conversion programme could transscript Benjamin Netanjahu to Бењамин Нетањаху.


----------



## Милан

Yep, that happens a lot.


----------



## Panceltic

I have found examples in Macedonian. "Пред ј не се пишува љ: волја, фотелја, Билјана, Лилјана, неволја, крилја, илјада"


----------



## ilocas2

Swedish footballer Fredrik Ljungberg


----------



## rusita preciosa

_Mod note: Requests to provide lists are outside the forum scope - the thread is now closed._


----------

