What ࢭ means
It marked back-vowel harmony in historical spelling.
The Tatar backness sign went before a word to show that the word, or its first part, used back vowels—vowels pronounced with the tongue farther back in the mouth. In Yaña imlâ, it could distinguish tor (“stay”) from tör (“variety”) when ordinary vowel marks did not settle the reading. Writers could leave it out when the other letters already showed the word’s backness.
Its documented history runs through the 1910s and 1920s. Experimental Urta imlâ used a related subscript form; Yaña imlâ used the standalone form ࢭ. The design changed while the backness-marking role remained.
Why does low alef not connect?
It sits before a word as a separate marker.
ࢭ does not join to the letters around it. The related subscript alef ٖ is a mark placed below another letter, so it has a different position and appearance.
As of 2025, a published character repertoire labels Bashkir and Tatar use obsolete. That label describes the historical writing systems, not a new meaning for the sign.
Historical and language-specific: it points to Tatar or Bashkir orthography.
The standalone sign ࢭ is not the attached subscript mark ٖ.
Part of collections
Who writes ࢭ
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Don't confuse it with
1
Questions people ask
1Why does ࢭ show as a box on some devices?
Not every system ships a font for the Arabic Extended-A block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.
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How to type or find ࢭ
- Also called
- backness sign · qalınlıq bilgäse
- Search it as
- low alef · Tatar backness sign · Tatar Arabic script · subscript alef · Yaña imlâ · Urta imlâ
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ࢭ\08ADCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.