What ᨏ means
It marks the prenasalized nca onset in Bugis.
Here, nca is the Latin transcription for one onset (the beginning of a syllable): a nasal start leading into the main consonant, rather than a separate n followed by ca. A Lontara consonant carries an inherent a vowel unless a vowel sign changes it. Typing nc in Latin letters produces two characters, not ᨏ.
Lontara is attested by the fourteenth century. Older manuscripts sometimes used ᨌ, the letter transcribed as ca, for this onset; modern printed Bugis practice uses a dedicated ᨏ sign.
Where does Lontara come from?
Lontara is a Sulawesi script descended from ancient Brahmi.
Brahmi is an ancient South Asian writing system from which many South and Southeast Asian scripts descend. Lontara may be related to Javanese and has some affinity with Tagalog (Baybayin). It was used to write Bugis, Makasar, and other regional languages; its texts include genealogies, chronicles, poems, laws, prayers, and diaries.
Part of the collection
Who writes ᨏ
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Don't confuse it with
2
Related characters
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Questions people ask
1Why does ᨏ look different in different fonts?
Different fonts can draw ᨏ with different shapes. Unicode 18.0.0 describes its encoded repertoire as based on standard printed forms from the mid-19th century; it does not include every palm-leaf manuscript variant.
More like this
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Collections with ᨏ
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How to type or find ᨏ
- Also called
- nca
- Search it as
- ᨏ · nyca · Lontara · Bugis · Buginese script · prenasalized nca
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ᨏ\1A0FCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.