Arabic Letter Oe, Final Form

It is the final form of ۆ, the Sorani long-o letter. The letter marks long /oː/ in Sorani Kurdish; تۆ (“you”) is one example. This character preserves the letter’s final-position shape as a separate code point, but it does not add a separate sound or meaning.

For ordinary Sorani text, enter ۆ and let the Arabic text shaper choose its displayed form from its position in the word. Unicode presentation forms exist for compatibility with older text encodings, so ﯚ is chiefly relevant when handling legacy text or a specific code point.

How did Kurdish come to use this letter?

Kurdish writers adapted Arabic script to represent Kurdish sounds. Ahmad Khani’s Mem u Zin, a Kurdish poetic work in Arabic script, dates to 1692. Today’s script choices also reflect regional history: Sorani uses an Arabic-based alphabet, while many Kurmanji writers use the Latin Hawar alphabet, introduced in 1932. Sorani writes long /oː/ with ۆ; Hawar uses o for the corresponding sound.

A 1929 grammar by Tewfiq Wehbi describes an Arabic-based Kurdish writing system designed for Kurdish grammar and sounds, including special type for added letters. That history helps explain the base letter ۆ; it does not date this separate final presentation form.