Djerv (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 pronounced as //dʑ// and pronounced as //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.
Djerv is also commonly used in Serbian Cyrillic, where it was an officially used letter. When it was placed before the letters н and л it was represented for the sounds pronounced as //ɲ// and pronounced as //ʎ//, which are represented by Њ and Љ today, respectively.
It can be transliterated as Ǵ.[2]
The letter Ђ was formed in 1818 by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić after several proposals of reforming Djerv by Lukijan Mušicki and Gligorije Geršić.[3] [4] However the letter Ћ (also based on djerv) was first used by Dositej Obradović in a direct reform of djerv.[5] [6]