What 𞤩 means
It spells the implosive /ɓ/ consonant inside Fula words.
Like a b, but the airstream runs inward — hence 'implosive'. In Latin-script Fula the same consonant is written ɓ, a transliteration aid rather than a stand-in for 𞤩 in Adlam text.
The alphabet itself is young: brothers Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry devised Adlam in the late 1980s to fit Fulani sounds that Arabic and Latin letters handled awkwardly. It has since spread from community teaching into print and phones.
Why does 𞤩 change shape?
Same letter, same sound — only the drawn form shifts.
Adlam is written from right to left and can be cursive or unjoined, so this lowercase letter has isolated and joining forms, and neighbors decide which appears. Its direction and joining echo Arabic, though Adlam is not derived from it.
The letterforms themselves have been revised: changes were standardized in 2019 and 2025, so older fonts can draw an outdated shape. A strange-looking rendering is a font problem, not a different letter.
Technical and language-bound: inside words it simply spells Fula, with no chat tone of its own.
A lone 𞤩 says nothing to readers who cannot read Adlam; it looks like a stray mark.
Part of the collection
Who writes 𞤩
Loading…
Related characters
3
Worth knowing
- Adlam's name is built from its first four letters — alif, daali, laam, miim — and reads as an acronym for a phrase meaning 'the alphabet that protects the peoples from vanishing.'
Questions people ask
2Why is 𞤩 a box?
Font support. The app or font cannot draw Adlam, so it shows a placeholder; switch to a font with Adlam coverage such as Noto Sans Adlam, free as of 2026.
What language uses Adlam?
Fula — also called Fulfulde or Pular. The script was designed for Fula's sounds and serves Fulani communities across West Africa and the diaspora.
More like this
10
How to type or find 𞤩
- Search it as
- ɓ · bh · bhe · adlam · adlam b · adlam alphabet · fulfulde · fulani
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𞤩\1E929Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.