What ꬉ means
ꬉ is a syllable character in Gamo, Gofa, Dawro, and Basketo spelling.
Ethiopic writing descends from a South Arabian consonant script. Dated evidence places it in use in the 1st–3rd centuries; by the 4th century, it had become an abugida: a base consonant form is modified for different vowels. That old history belongs to the script, not to ꬉ.
The 2009 Unicode proposal cites Gospel editions from Gamo, Gofa, and Dawro published in 2005. It says this added series served Gamo-Gofa-Dawro and Basketo spelling and let Ethiopic-script books be encoded faithfully while these language groups were choosing Latin script. A Gamo trial publication used mistaken forms for this series; the proposal says the community later used the AB09 series instead.
how do I type ꬉ
On SIL Ethiopic 2.0.1, press D, then =.
That key pair maps to ꬉ in this layout. It only works while the SIL Ethiopic keyboard is active.
someone sent me ꬉ
By itself, ꬉ is a sample of a syllable character.
If it arrives alone, ask which language and word it came from.
Gamo, Gofa, Dawro, and Basketo spelling use this extended series; familiarity with another Ethiopic orthography alone may not tell you its role.
Language-specific written syllable; its role comes from the word around it.
Alone, it is too little context to infer why the sender chose it.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsDon't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1why does ꬉ appear as a box
A missing font glyph is the likely cause. This character belongs to an extension of the Ethiopic script, and display depends on your browser and installed fonts. Use a Unicode Ethiopic font that supports this extension.
How to type ꬉ
ꬉ\AB09Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.