What ꬌ means
It writes a syllable in Gamo, Gofa, Dawro, and Basketo. ꬌ belongs to the Ethiopic ddh series, which has separate syllable forms for different vowels. Unicode doubles a Latin letter in some Ethiopic character names to make the names distinct; that doubled spelling does not specify pronunciation in any one language.
The Ethiopic syllabary developed first for Ge’ez, a language still used in liturgy, and was later adapted for other languages. Ethiopic Extended-A includes characters used in Gamo, Gofa, Dawro, Basketo, and Gumuz writing. A 2009 proposal documenting the characters cites printed Gamo, Gofa, Dawro, and Basketo materials dated from 2003 to 2006. It says these language groups had chosen Latin script while churches still published in Ethiopic, so encoding the characters would help reproduce existing books.
Why does ꬌ appear as a box?
Your font may not include Ethiopic Extended-A. As of October 2026, Abyssinica SIL lists coverage for the full Ethiopic range, while a detailed font table lists several fonts without Extended-A. A blank box points to the active font or text renderer; use a font that lists this range.
In the orthographies that use it, ꬌ is ordinary syllable text; elsewhere, its reading depends on knowing the relevant language.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Does “ddh” tell me how to pronounce ꬌ?
No. The doubled consonant in an Ethiopic Unicode character name distinguishes the label; it does not prescribe pronunciation for any one language.
How to type ꬌ
ꬌ\AB0CCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.