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Djerv

Djerv or Đerv is one of the Cyrillic alphabet letters that was used in Old Cyrillic. It was used in many early Serbian monuments to represent the sounds and. It exists in the Cyrillic Extended-B table as U+A648 and U+A649. It is the basis of the modern letters Ћ and Ђ; the former was in fact a direct revival of djerv and was considered the same letter.

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Jun 20, 2026
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Djerv (ꙉєрвъ)
Ꙉ ꙉ
Usage
Writing systemCyrillic
TypeAlphabetic
Sound values/dʑ/, /tɕ/
History
DescendantsЋ ћ

Djerv or Đerv (/dʒɜːrv/, JƏRV; Majuscule: Ꙉ, Minuscule: ꙉ) is one of the Cyrillic alphabet letters that was used in Old Cyrillic. It was used in many early Serbian monuments to represent the sounds /dʑ/ and /tɕ/ (modern đ/ђ and ć/ћ).1 It exists in the Cyrillic Extended-B table as U+A648 and U+A649. It is the basis of the modern letters Ћ and Ђ; the former was in fact a direct revival of djerv and was considered the same letter.1

Djerv is also commonly used in Serbian Cyrillic, where it was an officially used letter. When placed before the letters н and л it represented the sounds /ɲ/ and /ʎ/, which are represented by Њ and Љ today, respectively.

It can be transliterated as Ǵ.2

Spelling reforms and forming of the letters Ћ and Ђ

Serbian Cyrillic script, with djerv. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 16th century source ↗

The letter Ђ was formed in 1818 by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić after several proposals of reforming Djerv by Lukijan Mušicki and Gligorije Geršić.341 However the letter Ћ (also based on djerv) was first used by Dositej Obradović in a direct reform of djerv.56

Computing codes

Character information
Preview Ꙉ ꙉ
Unicode name CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DJERV CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DJERV
Encodings decimal hex dec hex
Unicode 42568 U+A648 42569 U+A649
UTF-8 234 153 136 EA 99 88 234 153 137 EA 99 89
Numeric character reference Ꙉ Ꙉ ꙉ ꙉ
References

References

  1. Maretić, Tomislav. Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga književnog jezika, p. 14-15. 1899.
  2. Lunt, Horace (1974). Old Church Slavonic Grammar. The Hague: Mouton. p. 16.
  3. Lalević, Miodrag S. (1953). Potsetnik iz srpskohrvatskog jezika i pravopisa: s pravopisnim i jezičkim savetnikom. Rad. p. 75. Облик му је у Вуковој азбуци дао песник Лукијан Мушицки
  4. Петар Ђорђић. Историја српске ћирилице. Београд, 1971.
  5. Maretić, Tomislav. Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga književnog jezika. 1899.
  6. Campbell, George L.; Moseley, Christopher (2013-05-07). The Routledge Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets. Routledge. p. 85. ISBN 978-1-135-22296-3.
Further reading

Further reading