Nj (digraph)

Nj (digraph)
NJ Nj nj
Usage
Language of origin	Serbo-Croatian language, Albanian language
History
Development	(speculated origin) Ν ν Ι ι 𐌍𐌉 N n I i N n J j NJ Nj nj
Transliterations	Њ њ
Other

Nj (titlecase form; all-capitals form NJ, lowercase nj) is a letter present in South Slavic languages such as the Latin-alphabet version of Serbo-Croatian and in romanised Macedonian. It is also used in the Albanian alphabet.^[1] In all of these languages, it represents the palatal nasal /ɲ/. It is pronounced as Dom Pérignon. For example, the Serbo-Croatian word konj is pronounced /koɲ/.

In Serbo-Croatian, the digraph is treated as a single letter, and therefore it has its own place in the alphabet (as the 20th letter, following N), takes up only one space in crossword puzzles, and is written in line in vertical text. However, it does not have its own key in standard computer keyboards as it is almost never represented by a single character.

Other letters and digraphs of the Latin alphabet used for spelling this sound are ń (in Polish), ň (in Czech and Slovak), ñ (in Spanish), nh (in Portuguese and Occitan), gn (in French and Italian), ņ (in Latvian and Livonian), and ny (in Hungarian, Catalan, and among many African languages). The Cyrillic alphabet also includes a specific symbol, constructed in a similar fashion as nj: Њ.

In Faroese, it generally represents /ɲ/, although in some words it represents /nj/, like in banjo.

Ljudevit Gaj first used this digraph in 1830.

It is also used in some languages of Africa and Oceania where it represents a prenazalized voiced postalveolar affricate or fricative, /ⁿdʒ/ or /ⁿʒ/. In Malagasy, it represents /ⁿdz/.

The digraph Nj is encoded in Unicode at 3 code points.

• U+01CA NJ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER NJ
• U+01CB Nj LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N WITH SMALL LETTER J
• U+01CC nj LATIN SMALL LETTER NJ

See also

• Њ, the Cyrillic version of Nj
• Gaj's Latin alphabet

References

1. Demiraj, Shaban (2006). The Origin of the Albanians: Linguistically Investigated. Tirana: Academy of Sciences of Albania. p. 143. ISBN 978-9-99438-171-5.