What Ꮿ means
Ꮿ represents the Cherokee syllable transliterated as “ya.”
Alone, it has no fixed translation: the surrounding Cherokee word supplies the meaning. It belongs to a y-series in which each sign represents a different syllable.
Why was the Cherokee syllabary created?
To write spoken Cherokee with signs for its syllables.
The earliest surviving evidence is placed in the early nineteenth century. An archaeological study published in 2011 interpreted marks at Red Bird River Shelter, a rock-shelter site, as experiments in creating the script. That interpretation points to a new invention rather than an ancient inherited alphabet.
The Cherokee Phoenix, a Cherokee newspaper, used the syllabary in 1828 for news and political debate, including debate over the forced removal of Cherokee people from their homelands. As of 2025, Cherokee Nation teaching materials included charts, flashcards, and a Cherokee translation of the New Testament. The script serves public writing and language learning; Ꮿ remains the ya syllable.
On its own, Ꮿ reads as part of Cherokee writing, not as a Latin Y substitute.
A syllable is not a translation: read the surrounding Cherokee word.
Part of the collection
Who writes Ꮿ
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Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
5
Combination ideas
1Questions people ask
1Why can Ꮿ look different in another font?
It can. Some fonts use traditional cap-height forms; others support separately encoded lowercase Cherokee forms. Their silhouettes can differ while representing the same syllable.
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How to type or find Ꮿ
- Also called
- ya · Cherokee ya
- Search it as
- Cherokee syllabary · Cherokee pronunciation · Cherokee keyboard · Cherokee Phonetic · Tsalagi
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Ꮿ\13EFy key enters Ꮿ.ya.Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.