What ዅ means
ዅ belongs inside an Ethiopic-script word. Ethiopic signs generally pair a consonant with a vowel, and the word and language give this sign its reading. It appears in Amharic, Awngi, and Tigrinya, among other languages.
The script is usually linked to an older South Arabian consonant alphabet, which wrote consonants without vowel signs; the details of its development remain debated. The earliest evidence is Geʾez writing without vowel signs. By the 3rd–4th centuries CE, vowel-bearing forms had developed; Christian scripture translation helped drive the change, and the script later served other languages.
Is ዅ the Gurage HHWE character?
No. HHWE is a separate proposed character. A 2021 proposal for a modern Gurage orthography describes HHWE as a character related to ዅ, but not interchangeable with it.
Part of the collection
Who writes ዅ
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Questions people ask
1Why does ዅ show as a box on some devices?
Not every system ships a font for the Ethiopic block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.
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Collections with ዅ
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How to type or find ዅ
- Search it as
- ዅ · Ethiopic script · Geʾez · fidel · Amharic · Awngi · Tigrinya · Gurage HHWE · Ethiopic keyboard · ethiopic letter
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ዅ\12C5Why is ዅ a box on my screen?
fsymbols draws rare signs with its own fonts, so they show here even where your device has none. An app or website without such a font shows an empty box (□) or a question mark instead. Turn our fonts off to see each sign as your device draws it by itself: a box here means a box in your chats and documents too.
Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.