LingoflyЊ њ — nje
«nje» is a consonant of the Serbian script, read as “ny as in "canyon"”. A soft ny in one sound — the ny of "canyon". For example, in the word “њега” (njega) — him. The Serbian alphabet has 30 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. Built like lj, from n. In the Latin script — nj. It appears, for example, in the word “довиђења” (doviđenja) — goodbye.
In short
| Character | Њ њ |
| Name | nje |
| Sound | ny as in "canyon" |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 17th of 30, its neighbours in the course are н and о (o), appears in 231 words of this site.
How to type Њ њ
- On a phone: add the Serbian keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+045A and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 045A.
- Unicode code points: њ — U+045A, Њ — U+040A. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
A soft ny in one sound — the ny of "canyon"
Other written forms
The same character is written differently on a shop sign and in a book. Here are all the forms you may meet.
| Form | Character | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Latin | nj | two signs, one letter |
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
The character in the “six letters of serbian's own” group
They are ј, љ, њ, ћ, ђ, џ. Three of them, ћ, ђ and џ, form soft-and-hard pairs where English hears a single sound: soft ћ against hard ч, soft ђ against hard џ. Telling them apart by ear is the hardest listening task in the language.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «nje» it is “ny as in "canyon"”, as in the word “њега” (njega)), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 30 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Serbian character њ read?
As “ny as in "canyon"” — it is a consonant of the Serbian script. A soft ny in one sound — the ny of "canyon". For example, in the word “њега” (njega) — him.
What is the letter њ called?
Nje. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Serbian script: it is called “nje” and reads as “ny as in "canyon"”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.