Arabic Letter Reh With Loop

It represents Rohingya's retroflex r. In the Arabic-based Fonna alphabet, the letter is called bottya-reh. “Retroflex” means the tongue curls back as the sound is made.

The history of Arabic-script Rohingya has differing dates: a 2010 Unicode proposal describes it as a tradition already more than 200 years old, while a Rohingya-language textbook gives 1650 as its starting point. These accounts concern the wider writing tradition, not a known first appearance of this particular letter.

Fonna extended Arabic spelling to represent Rohingya sounds that ordinary Arabic spelling did not mark. Hanifi, a separate script developed in the 1980s, offers another way to write the same language. A Rohingya-language overview in 2026 presents Fonna alongside Hanifi and Rohingyalish in religious education; readers using those other scripts do not use this Fonna letter.

Why is bottya-reh a dependent consonant?

It joins a preceding consonant in Fonna spelling. The consonant and bottya-reh form one sound unit, and a following vowel is associated with the preceding consonant. That makes the loop part of the letter's structure, not an embellishment.

The Unicode proposal compares its role with Myanmar's medial-ra sign: both have a dependent role in a syllable. That is a comparison of function, not evidence that the two scripts or letters are related.