What ᯨ means
In Pakpak, ᯨ marks a short neutral vowel. This is a schwa, made with the mouth relaxed.
Karo can use the same mark for o; the vowel value follows the language.
Where does Batak writing come from?
Batak writing links to Pallava and Kawi scripts. Pallava came from south India; Kawi was used for Old Javanese. Batak regional forms later diversified. Sitopayan's inscription, a text carved in stone, shows Batak writing in the 13th century.
Pustaha are folded tree-bark books preserving ritual knowledge, medicine, astrology and divination. A manuscript in a European collection is dated 1764; that date belongs to the book, not this vowel sign.
Part of the collection
Who writes ᯨ
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Don't confuse it with
1
Questions people ask
1Why does ᯨ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
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How to type or find ᯨ
- Also called
- ketolongen
- Search it as
- Pakpak vowel sign · Batak vowel mark · Karo o sign · Batak combining vowel
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ᯨ\1BE8Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.