What I find interesting about this is that this transition also happened in highly unrelated languages such as Hungarian, Greek and Swedish, not only in related Portuguese and French.

In Hungarian, /ʎ/ in most dialects turned into /j/, but the spelling ⟨ly⟩ was preserved, hence lyuk [juk].
In Swedish, /lj/ turned into /j/ in word-initial positions, but the spelling ⟨lj⟩ was preserved, hence ljus [ˈjʉːs].
In Cypriot Greek, /lj/ is often pronounced as [ʝː], especially by younger speakers. In Standard Modern Greek, it always surfaces as [ʎ].

I guess people find it hard to pronounce /ʎ/ but are too inert to change the spelling.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

My real question would be: if it’s hard to pronounce, why did it appear long ago in so many different languages?

Portuguese still keeps it, with /lh/ like trabalho which is different from /j/ like janeiro.