Arabic letter cheh, initial form

It is the initial connected shape of the letter چ. In Persian and related Arabic-script writing, چ represents /tʃ/, like “ch” in English. This shape appears when the letter joins to the letter that follows.

Persian adapted Arabic writing to represent sounds Arabic did not have. Early New Persian written in Arabic script is attested by 905. In an 11th century Afghan document corpus, the ch sound appears in connected forms, but dotting was often neglected and the familiar three-dot form is absent. چ belongs to the same adaptation as پ, ژ, and گ, letters used for other sounds absent from Arabic. The base letter is also used in Urdu, Pashto, Kurdish, Uyghur, and other Arabic-script traditions.

Why does ﭼ look different from چ?

This character fixes one position of the base letter. Text normally stores چ; the writing system shapes it as initial, medial, final, or isolated according to its connections with neighboring letters. A font can display this initial shape even when the text stores only چ.

How do I type the initial form?

Type چ; the text engine supplies the initial shape. On the checked Windows 10.0.29580.1000 layouts, Persian and Pashto use OEM 6, Urdu uses Shift+O, and Central Kurdish uses Shift+C. These keys enter چ, not the pre-shaped character. For ordinary words, use the base letter.