What 𞥇 means
It marks a glottal stop before a vowel. A glottal stop is a brief closure in the throat. 𞥇 is used when a consonant is followed by that stop and then a vowel; in the text it follows the consonant and sits above it. The stop before a word-initial vowel is normally unwritten.
Why was Adlam created?
To make Fula easier to read and teach. Adlam began in 1989 in N’Zérékoré, Guinea, when brothers Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry developed it after Arabic-script Pular writing proved difficult to read: spellings varied and did not represent every Fula sound. They first taught it in lessons on water hygiene and basic medical care; teaching centres and print helped it spread.
Is Adlam Hamza the Arabic hamza?
No. They are separate characters, though both mark a glottal stop. Arabic influenced Adlam’s right-to-left direction and joining style, but Adlam developed as a separate script and is not descended from Arabic. Fula is also written in Latin and Arabic-script spellings; the marks belong to their respective scripts and cannot be substituted.
Technical and orthographic: this is a spelling mark, not decoration.
Do not substitute Arabic ء when writing Adlam.
Drift: Adlam letter shapes were standardized in 2019 and 2025; older fonts may still render some forms differently.
Don't confuse it with
1Combination ideas
1Questions people ask
1Why does 𞥇 disappear when I type it?
It is a combining mark, so by itself it has no consonant to sit over. Without Adlam font support or mark positioning, it may be missing or misplaced.
How to type 𞥇
𞥇\1E947Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.