What 𖧨 means
It records njee, a Bamum word for an era or time period.
Bamum writing took shape in western Cameroon around 1896 under King Ibrahim Njoya and his scribes. An early manuscript is dated 1897. The script was created to write the Bamum language and preserve court knowledge in records, correspondence, histories, and lessons.
It began with picture and word signs, then successive revisions moved it toward a syllabary: a system in which signs represent spoken syllables. Phase E took shape around 1908; the standardized modern form followed in 1910. As French colonial rule expanded, the script lost ground in schools. By 1930, an administrator described its use as limited to the sultan’s court. A Bamum-script teaching school reopened in 1985. As of 2026, the Bamum Scripts and Archives Project was teaching the script to young people.
This is a historical Bamum word sign; modern Bamum writing uses a later phase.
Part of collections
Who writes 𖧨
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Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
1
Questions people ask
1Why does 𖧨 sometimes show as a box?
Usually, the font lacks this historical Bamum glyph. A box is a missing-glyph fallback, not a different meaning.
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How to type or find 𖧨
- Search it as
- bamum · bamoun · bamun · shumom · njee · epoch · phase e · syllabary
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𖧨\169E8Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.