Ethiopic Syllable Cwa

It writes a rounded-lips “chwa” syllable in Ethiopic script.

An Amharic Latin transliteration writes it chwa or čʷa: say roughly “chwa,” rounding your lips for the w. It is a syllable inside a word, not a standalone English word. Unicode’s Latin name cwa identifies the character; it does not prescribe pronunciation in every language. ቿ is the rounded-lips W-form associated with ቸ, not ቸ followed by a separate w.

The script grew from a South Arabian abjad, a writing system that mainly marks consonants. Inscriptions in an early script resembling Sabaean, called Pseudo-Sabaean, in Ethiopia and Eritrea date to the 8th/7th centuries BCE. An Ethiopian abjad wrote Ge’ez by the 1st–3rd centuries CE; in the 4th century the script shifted toward an abugida, where each consonant form includes a vowel. Those dates trace the script’s development, not the history of ቿ alone.

How do I type ቿ?

Select an Ethiopic phonetic layout, if one is available.

Unicode specifies no universal shortcut. Ethiopic input methods generally map keystrokes to consonant-and-vowel syllables. In Sparkpond’s Amharic phonetic mapping, cwa produces ቿ (checked 2026-09-06); other Amharic and Tigrinya layouts may use a different sequence.

Is ቿ an emoji?

No; it is text from the Ethiopic writing system.

The active Ethiopic font draws its shape, so its silhouette can vary between fonts. By itself, ቿ is a syllable, not a complete word; use the surrounding text or ask the sender which word it belongs to.