Buginese Letter Va

On its own, ᨓ represents the syllable wa. Unicode’s formal character name uses va; Lontara materials commonly write it as wa in Latin letters. Lontara is an abugida, a writing system where each consonant carries a default vowel; here, it is a. Separate signs change that vowel, so this letter forms part of a syllable rather than a whole word.

Lontara and Makasar are related scripts developed on Sulawesi. Lontara writes Bugis, Makasar, and Mandar, among other languages. It traditionally leaves final consonants unmarked, so a word’s ending may depend on context.

How far back does Lontara go?

Lontara is attested as early as the fourteenth century. It descends from Brahmi, an ancient South Asian script. Unicode describes Kawi, used from the eighth to sixteenth centuries, as an ancestor shared by several or perhaps all scripts discussed in the region; it does not trace ᨓ separately.

Early Lontara served record-keeping, especially genealogies and lines of descent. Later manuscripts held royal chronicles, laws, religious teaching, calendars, farming advice, stories, poems, and private notes.

Writing moved from incised palm-leaf strips to paper, pen-written pages, and print. Latin spelling became usual for Bugis in later printing. From the middle of the 20th century, Lontara continued in schoolbooks and Bugis religious publishing.

How do I type ᨓ with a vowel sign?

Use a Unicode-aware picker and a Lontara-capable font. Ordinary Latin keyboards have no dedicated key for ᨓ. Use the bare letter for its built-in a; add a separate vowel sign for another vowel.

The encoded form reflects standardized printing from the mid-19th century; palm-leaf manuscripts preserve additional hand-drawn variants. The i and u signs combine with the base, while e, o, and ae use spacing behavior, so unsupported fonts can misplace them.