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). 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.

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.

Spelling reforms and forming of the letters Ћ and Ђ

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

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

Computing codes

Character information
PreviewꙈꙉ
Unicode nameCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DJERVCYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DJERV
Encodingsdecimalhexdechex
Unicode42568U+A64842569U+A649
UTF-8234 153 136EA 99 88234 153 137EA 99 89
Numeric character referenceꙈꙈꙉꙉ

Further reading

  • Станишић, Вања С. (2020). [Puzzles of the Old Slavonic 'Đerv']. Српски језик: студије српске и словенске (in Serbian). 25 (1): 113–124. doi:. ISSN.
  • Bobaš, Mirko (2000-06-26). [The use of the letter đerv ĵ in 'Matica krštenih' in Kraljeva Sutjeska 1641-1727]. Filologija (in Serbo-Croatian) (33): 1–14. ISSN.