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<h2 class="blog-post-title"><a href="/2016/02/beautiful-ligatures-in-serbian-cyrillic/">Beautiful Ligatures in Serbian Cyrillic</a></h2>
<p class="blog-post-meta"><time datetime="2016-02-24T11:37:16Z">Wed Feb 24, 2016</time>
in
<a href="/categories/language/" rel="category tag">Language</a>, <a href="/categories/travel/" rel="category tag">Travel</a>
<a href="/tags/cyrillic/" rel="tag">Cyrillic</a>, <a href="/tags/serbia/" rel="tag">Serbia</a>
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<p>Ligatures for &ldquo;ль&rdquo; and &ldquo;нь&rdquo; are unique to the Cyrillic alphabets of several Slavic languages in Southeastern Europe. We don&rsquo;t have them in Bulgarian, so I can remember being confused the first time I saw them in Serbia. My confusion turned into fascination once I realized that their construction fused two characters that I knew how to use into one that we simply don&rsquo;t have. You can see љ (<em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lje">Lje</a></em>) on this road sign for Жељуша in Serbia (with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaj%27s_Latin_alphabet">Serbo-Croatian Latin</a> representation below it):</p>
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<img
sizes="(min-width: 35em) 1200px, 100vw"
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src="/2016/02/beautiful-ligatures-in-serbian-cyrillic/2016-02-10_hu548ce2ededffa3eb0b61879a11636bba_229110_800x0_resize_q75_box.jpg"
alt="Road sign for Жељуша town in Serbia showing the Cyrillic ligature for &amp;ldquo;ль&amp;rdquo;"/> <figcaption>
<p>Road sign for Жељуша town in Serbia showing the Cyrillic ligature for &ldquo;ль&rdquo;</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is a linguist by the name of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuk_Karad%C5%BEi%C4%87">Vuk Karadžić</a> who created these ligatures during a major reformation of the Serbian language and alphabet during the early 1800s. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_ligature">Typographic ligatures</a> themselves are an interesting concept dating back to the days of physical typesetting. The icing on the cake with these particular ligatures is their use of the beautifully subtle <em>er maluk</em> (ь) character, which is <a href="https://englishbulgaria.net/2016/01/finding-er-maluk/">slightly rare</a> in Bulgarian. I have recently seen these <a href="https://englishbulgaria.net/2016/02/beautiful-ligatures-in-macedonian-cyrillic/">ligatures in use in Macedonia</a> as well, but after learning about Vuk&rsquo;s reforms it seems appropriate that it was in Serbia where I first noticed them.</p>
<h2 id="a-tale-of-two-karadžićs">A Tale of Two Karadžićs</h2>
<p>The Karadžić name became known worldwide after the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_Wars">wars of independence in the former Yugoslav republics</a> during the 1990s. In a rather mind-blowing twist, it turns out that there are two well-known, directly related Karadžićs:</p>
<!--Evstafiev-Radovan_Karadzic_3MAR94.jpg Вук_Стефановић_Караџић.око_1850.jpg-->
<p>The first is, of course, the celebrated poet, ethnologist, and reformer of the Serbian language and writing system. The second is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radovan_Karad%C5%BEi%C4%87">Radovan Karadžić</a>, a Bosnian Serb who is now being <a href="http://www.icty.org/case/karadzic/4">tried for war crimes</a> at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). His indictment includes the alleged direct responsibility for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre">Srebrenica massacre</a>.</p>
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