What 𞥊 means
It changes how its base letter is read. With vowels 𞤫 and 𞤮, it distinguishes sounds that differ in how open the mouth is. With 𞤧 it writes Arabic ث, made with the tongue tip between the front teeth; with 𞤶 it writes Arabic ز, the buzzing s sound.
Adlam was devised in Guinea in 1989 by brothers Abdoulaye and Ibrahima Barry for Fula, called Pular in western regions and Fulfulde farther east. After their father wrote Fula words in Arabic script, one brother said the language needed a script of its own. The alphabet developed over the following years.
Why can nukta appear below the letter?
A vowel-length or doubled-consonant mark already takes the space above. Nukta normally sits above its base letter; when either mark is above, nukta appears below. That changes its position, not its identity.
In Fula, the names hoortobbhere (“dot above”) and lestobbhere (“dot below”) describe the two placements.
An Adlam spelling mark with a specific reading tied to its base letter, not decoration.
A lone 𞥊 is incomplete; it needs an Adlam base letter.
Drift: Adlam letter shapes have changed. As of 2026, some fonts have not adopted revised shapes, so the same character may look different across fonts.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsDon't confuse it with
3Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
1Why does 𞥊 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type 𞥊
𞥊\1E94ACodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.