What ꮝ means
It is the small Cherokee form for the “s” sound. It pairs with Ꮝ when Cherokee text distinguishes case.
Sequoyah developed the Cherokee syllabary between 1815–1821 so Cherokee speakers could write their language. A syllabary is a writing system whose characters usually stand for syllables; it also includes Ꮝ for the standalone s sound. It supported correspondence, literacy, and Cherokee-language publishing.
Why is there a small Cherokee form?
Cherokee writing began without uppercase and lowercase forms.
When digital text gained case distinctions for Cherokee, the established characters were treated as uppercase and paired with smaller lowercase forms. ꮝ is the small partner of Ꮝ; both are forms of the same Cherokee character, with the distinction supplied by typography.
A Cherokee writing character for the s sound; its small form belongs to text that distinguishes case.
Alone in a message, it gives little context; read it as Cherokee only when the surrounding text supports that.
Part of the collection
Who writes ꮝ
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Related characters
1
Questions people ask
1Why does ꮝ appear as a box?
A font may lack this lowercase Cherokee character, so a device can show a box or fallback glyph. In 2024, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) documented uneven font support for Cherokee lowercase forms.
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How to type or find ꮝ
- Search it as
- Cherokee s · Cherokee lowercase s · Cherokee syllabary s · Cherokee keyboard · ꮝ meaning
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ꮝ\AB9DCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.